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LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL 



Mental and Scholastic 

Tests 



Report by the Education Officer submitting Three 

Memoranda by Mr. CYRIL BURT, M.A., 

u 

Psychologist, on Mental and Scholastic Tests. 



PUBLISHED BY THE LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL 

Arrd may be purchased, either directly or through any Bookseller, from 

P. S. KING AND SON, Limited, 

2 and 4, Great Smith Street, Victoria Street, Westminster, S.W., 

Agents for the sale of the publications of the London County Council. 

1921 

No. 2052. Price 21s. 



c^i 






LIBRak-C Or" Co.-GKESS 

RECEIVED 

FEB 18 1926 

DOCUMENTS DIVISION 



CONTENTS. 



PREFATORY MEMORANDUM BY THE EDUCATION" OFFICER xiii 

INTRODUCTORY NOTE .. xiv 

MEMORANDUM I. — The Binet-Simon Scale : Practical 

Use of the Method. 

1. The General Nature of the Binet-Simon Tests . . . . 1 

2. General Directions for the Use of the Scale . . . . . . 9 

3. Special Directions for the Individual Tests . . . . . . 24 

4. Other Versions . . . . . . . . . . . . . • 68 

Appendices to Memorandum I — ■ 

1. Lisb of Materials needed for the Binet-Simon Tests . . 75 

2. Illustrations needed for Particular Tests in the Binet-Simon 

Scale .. : .. .. - .. 79 

MEMORANDUM 11^ — The ^Binet-Simon Scale : Theoretical 

Validity-of the •Results' < 

1. The General Scope of the Investigation . . . . . . 129 

2. The Order of Difficulty of the Tests : and their Allocation 

to Appropriate Ages . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 

3. The Distribution of Intelligence . . . . . . . . 147 

4. The Mental Ratio . . . . 151 

5. The Line of Demarcation between Normals and Defectives 163 

6. The Relations between Mental Ability and Educational 

Attainments . . . . . . . . . . . . 175 

7. The Application of the Tests to Juvenile Delinquents . . 184 

8. The Influence of Sex and Social Status . . . . . . 180 

9. The Diagnostic Value of the Tests 199 

10. Summary and Conclusion . . . . . . . . 207 



Appendices to Memorandum II — 

PAGE 

1. Age- Assignments suggested for the Several Binet-Simon 

Tests by Previous Investigators . . . . . . . . 210 

2. The Calculation of Coefficients of Association . . . . 217 

3. Supplementary Tests of Intelligence : Written and Group 

Tests 221 

4. Supplementary Tests of Intelligence : Oral or Individual 

Tests 236 



MEMORANDUM III. — Tests of Educational Attainments. 

1. Need and Uses of Scholastic Tests . . . . . . . . 257 

2. Practical Suggestions for the Use of the Scales . . . . 260 

3. Instructions for the Several Tests — 

i. Tests of Reading 269 

ii. Tests of Spelling 287 

hi. Tests of Arithmetic . . . . . . .... 295 

iv. Tests of Writing 307 

v. Tests of Drawing . . .. .. .. .. .. 317 

vi. Tests of Handwork 328 

vii. Tests of Composition . . . . . . . . 330 

4. Extreme Range of Individual Variation . . . . . . 332 

5. Relative Backwardness of Defectives in the Various Subjects 335 

6. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338 



Appendices to Memorandum III — 

1. Materials for Reading, Spelling and Arithmetic Tests . . 339 

2. Median Specimens of Handwriting, Drawing, and Com- 

position for Each Age . . .. .. .. .. .. 370 

3. Tables of Norms for the Various Scholastic Tests . . . . 399 

4. Selected References . . . . . . . . . . 411 



Index of Subjects 
Index of Names 



415 
431 



TABLES. 



I. Computation of Marks . . . . . . . . . . 13 

II. Key for Converting Test-Scores into Mental Ages facing 19 
III. Number of Children Passing the Several Tests. Ordi- 
nary Elementary Schools . . . . . . . . 132-3 

IV. Ditto. Special (M.D.) Schools 135 

V. Correlations between the Orders of Difficulty found by 

Various Investigators .. .. .. .. .. 137 

VI. Larger Changes in Age-Assignments . . . . . . 141 

VII. Conversion of Mental Ages based upon Binet's Original 

Scales 142 

VIII. Differences in Order of Difficulty for Normals and 

Defectives . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 

IX. Averages and Variability at Each Age for Children of 

Ordinary and Special (M.D.) Schools . . . . 145 

X. Distribution of Intelligence. Ordinary Elementary 

Schools 148-9 

XL Ditto. Special (M.D.) Schools 150 

XII. Ditto. Percentiles for Each Age-group . . . . . . 151 

XIII. Mental Ratios obtained from the Same Children during 

Five Successive Years . . . . . . . . . • 152 

XIV. Annual Change in Mental Age and Mental Ratio in the 

Same Children. Grouped according to Age . . 155 

XV. Ditto. Grouped according to Mental Ratio . . . . 156 

XVI. Ditto. Grouped according to both Age and Ratio . . 157 

XVII. Distribution of Intelligence with Standard Deviation 

as Unit . . . . . . . . . . • • • • 161 

XVIII. Line of Demarcation between Normals and Defectives 169 
XIX. Correspondence between Mental and Educational Ratios 177' 
XX. Observed and Partial Correlations between Age, Intelli- 
gence, School Attainments, and the Results of the 
Binet-Simon Tests . . . . . . • • • • 182' 

XXL Observed and Partial Correlations between the Binet- 
Simon Tests and Attainments in the Several School 

Subjects 184 

XXII. Juvenile Delinquents. Distribution of General Intelli- 
gence at Each Age . . . . . . . • • • 185 



VI 



TABLE Jr^x. 

XXIII. Juvenile Delinquents. Distribution of Educational 

Attainments at Each Age . . . . . • • • 186 

XXIV. Ditto. Distribution of General Intelligence and Educa- 

tional Attainments Irrespective of Age . . • • 186 

XXV. Differences Due to Social Status 191 

XXVI. Home Conditions of Children attending Schools of 

Poorest, Median, and Best Social Status . . . . 191 

XXVII. Differences Due to Sex 193 

XXVIII. Differences in Order of Difficulty for Children differing 

in Social Status or in Sex . . . . . . . . 194 

XXIX. Association between Performances in Tests and Differ- 
ences in Sex and Social Status . . . . . • 197 

XXX. Correlations between Tests and Teachers' Estimates . . 200 

XXXI. Coefficients of Colligation (w) between Success in Tests 

and Intelligence as Estimated by Teacher . . . . 205 

XXXII. Assignments for the Several Tests according to Different 

Investigators . . . . . . . . . . . • 212-15 

XXXIII. Fourfold Table to Illustrate the Conception of Asso- 
ciation . . . . . . . . . . . • • • 217 

XXXIV. Norms for Supplementary Tests of Intelligence . . . . 222 

XXXV. Ditto. Averages and Border-lines for Reasoning Tests 238 
XXXVI. Arithmetic (Four Fundamental Rules) : Percentage of 

Error 302 

XXXVII. Incidence of Left-Handedness among Normals and De- 
fectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311 

XXXVIII. Relative Attainments of Children of Special (M.D.) 
Schools in Test of the Chief Subjects of the School 
Curriculum . . . . . . . . . . . . 337 

XXXIX. Graded Reading Test (Accuracy) 399 

XL. Ungraded Reading Test : Two- and Three-letter Mono- 
syllables (Accuracy) . . . . . . . . . . 399 

XLI. Ungraded Reading Test : Two- and Three-letter Mono- 
syllables (Speed) 400 

XLII. Reading (Comprehension) : Directions Test (Individual 

Examination) . . . . . . . . . . . . 400 

XLIII. Reading (Continuous Test) : Speed . . . . . . 401 

XLIV. Reading (Continuous Test) : Accuracy . . . . . . 401 

XLV. Reading (Continuous Test) : Comprehension . . . . 402 

XL VI. Spelling 402 

XL VII. Dictation 403 

XL VIII. Arithmetic (Oral Test) 403 

XLIX. Arithmetic (Written Test) : Mechanical 404 



Vll 



TABLE 

XL. Arithmetic (Written Test) : Problems . 

LI. Arithmetic (Four Fundamental Rules) 

LII. Arithmetic (Four Fundamental Rules) 

tion ' . . 

LIII. Arithmetic (Four Fundamental Rules) : 

cation 

LIV. Arithmetic (Four Fundamental Rules : 

LV. Writing (Speed) .. 

LVI. Writing (Quality) 

LVII. Drawing (Quality) 

LVIII. Handwork (Speed) 

LIX. Handwork (Quality) 

LX. Composition (Speed) 

LXI. Composition (Quality) 

LXII. Composition (Length of Sentences) 



(i) Addition 
(ii) Subtrac- 

(iii) Multipli- 

(iv) Division 



PAGE 

404 
405 

405 

406 
406 
407 
407 
408 
408 
409 
409 
410 
410 



SCHEDULES. 



SCHEDULE PAGE 

I. Sample Record-Card for the Binet-Simon Tests (with 

Original Age-Assignments) . . . . . . . . 5 

II. Sample Record-Form for the Binet-Simon Tests (with 

Revised Age- Assignments) . . . . . . facing 19 

III. Classification of Spelling Errors (A) . . . . . . 291 

IV. Classification of Spelling Errors (B) 293 

V. Analysis of Quality of Handwriting . . . . . . 310 



FIGURES. 



FIGURE 
1. 

2. 
3. 
4. 
5. 



(a) 
(6) 

(a) 
(6) 

(a) 
(6) 

(a) 

(&) 
(c) 



Test 13. Copying a Square. Evaluation of Results. Binet's 
Examples 

Test 13. Copying a Square. Order and Direction in which 
the Lines are drawn 

Test 22. Copying a Diamond. Evaluation of Results 
Binet's Examples 

Test 22. Copying a Diamond. Order and Direction in 
which the Lines are drawn 

Test 26. Divided Card. Position of Intact and Divided 
Cards as shown to the Child 

Test 48. Memory Drawing. Evaluation of Results : 
Children's Reproductions of the "Truncated Pyramid" 
Children's Reproductions of the " Greek Key Pattern " 

Test 61. Folded Paper : 

as shown 

as reproduced 

Test 63. Reversed Triangle : 
as shown 
as drawn 

Tests 6, 29, and 56. Describing Pictures 
Ages III., VI., and XII. (i) 



do. 
do. 



10. 

11. (a) 
(b) 
(c) 

12. 

13. 

14. 

15. 

16. 



17. 



Test 10. 

Test 11. 
do. 
do. 

Test 13. 

Test 17. 



(ii) . . 
(hi) . . 

Comparing Lines 

Comparing Faces (i) 
do. (ii) 

do. (hi) 

Copying Square 

Four Colours 

Copying Diamond 

Transcription . . 

Age VII. Missing Features (i) 

do. do. (ii) 

do. do. (iii) 

do. do. (iv) 

Tests 36 and 44. Ages VIII. and IX. Reading and Re 
production 



do. 

do. 

Age IV. 

Age IV. 
do. 
do. 

Age V. 

Age V. 

Test 22. Age VI. 

Test 23. Age VI. 

(a) Test 32 
(6) do. 
(c) do. 
{d) do. 



31 
33 
37 
38 
41 

54 

55 

65 
65 

69 
69 

81 
83 

85 

87 

89 
91 
93 

95 

97 

99 

101 

103 
105 
107 
109 

111 



FIGURE 












PAGE 


18. Test 48. 


Age X. 


Memory Drawing 






113 


19. Test 55. 


Age XII. 


Rearranging 


Mixed Sentences 


(i) • 


115 


do. 


do. 


do. 




do. 


(ii) . 


115 


do. 


do. 


do. 




do. 


(iii) . 


115 


20. (a) Test 57. 


Age XIII 


. Suggestion 








117 


(b) do. 


do. 


do. 








119 


(c) do. 


do. 


do. 








121 


{d) do. 


do. 


do. 








123 


(e) do. 


do. 


do. 








125 


(/) do. 


do. 


do. 








127 



21. 

22. 

23. 

24. 

25. 
26. 

27. 



Diagrammatic Representation of the Test Series as a Linear 
Scale 



139 



Distribution according to Mental Age of Children of Ordi- 
nary Elementary and Special (M.D.) Schools at Each 
Chronological Year . . . . . . . . facing 147 

Overlapping of Consecutive Age-groups . . . . . . 159 

Distribution according to General Intelligence of Children 

of Ordinary Elementary and Special (M.D.) Schools facing 162 

Distribution of Juvenile Delinquents according to General 

Intelligence and Educational Attainments . . . . 187 

Average Number of Tests passed at Each Age by Children 
of Ordinary Elementary and Special (M.D.) Schools 
and of Superior and Poorer Social Status . . facing 191 

Abac to determine from Two Given Percentages the Corre- 
sponding Coefficient of Association . . . . . . 219 



28-38. 


Porteus Mazes : 






28. 


Age III 


246 


29. 


Age IV 




247 


30. 


Age V 




248 


31. 


Age VI 




249 


32. 


Age VII 




250 


33. 


Age VIII 




251 


34. 


Age IX 




252 


35. 


Age X 




253 


36. 


Age XI 




254 


37. 


Age XII 




255 


38. 


Age XIV 




256 


39. 


Examples of Mirror-Script and Inverted Writing . 


. . 313-15 


40. 


Examples of Choreic Handwriting 


316 


41. 


Drawing. Drawing by Backward Girl. To illustrat 


e "Mixed 




Profile" 


323 


42. 


Drawing. Median Sample for Defectives. Aged 10 


324 


43-52. 


Handwriting. Median Specimens for Each Age : 




43. 


Age 5 


371 


44. 


Age 6 


. . 372-3 


45. 


Age 7 


374 


46. 


Age 8 


375 


47. 


Age 9 




376 



XI 



FIGURE 












PAGE 


48. Age 10 












377 


49. Age 11 












378 


50. Age 12 ... 












379 


51. Age 13 












380 


52. Age 14 












381 


53-64. Drawing. Median Specimens for Each Age : 


53. Age 3 ... 












383 


54. Age 4 ... 












384 


55. Age 5 ... 












385 


56. Age 6 ... 












386 


57. Age 7 












387 


58. Age 8 ... 












388 


59. Age 9 ... 












389 


60. Age 10 ... 












390 


61. Age 11 ... 












391 


62. Age 12 ... 












392 


63. Age 13 ... 












393 


64. Age 14 ... 












394 



Although these memoranda are published by the 
Countil, it must be understood that responsibility for 
the views and conclusions therein expressed rests with 
the writers alone. 



PREFATORY MEMORANDUM BY THE 
EDUCATION OFFICER. 



The present volume consists of three memoranda prepared by Mr. Burt. 
The first memorandum deals with the practical use of the psychological 
scales for testing the intelligence of children ; the second discusses the 
theoretical validity of the results obtained ; and the third gives in 
considerable detail suitable tests of various educational attainments. 

Mr. Burt criticises the suggestions of American experts such as 
Yerkes, Goddard, and Terman for the improvement of the Binet-Simon 
scale : and summarises in the light of his own investigations the type 
of tests for intelligence most suitable for London children at different 
ages. He finds that children of the ordinary elementary schools in 
London are in intelligence slightly above the level of other children of 
similar social status tested elsewhere with similar scales : that delin- 
quents differ from normals rather by backwardness and instability than 
by mental deficiency in the narrower sense : and that the defectives of 
the London special schools differ from normals far less in lack of intelli- 
gence than in lack of school ability : and concludes that " when the dull 
and backward are recognised as requiring definite educational provision 
a larger proportion of the special school cases will doubtless be accommo- 
dated in the special classes in the ordinary school, rather than associated 
with those whose future lies for ever in an institution." 

There is a great and growing demand for reliable mental tests. 
Mr. Burt, who is undoubtedly one of the greatest living authorities on 
these tests, has dealt with the present position in a scholarly and 
very interesting manner. The memoranda contain the results of much 
valuable research, and will be of the greatest value to London teachers, 
especially in connection with the discovery of special ability, the pro- 
motion of children, and the institution, where necessary, of backward 
classes. They will also appeal strongly to a larger public outside the 
London area. 

Mr. Burt's results provide, as it were, a first rough sketch of the 
intellectual and educational progress of the average London child through- 
out the years of elementary school life. Teachers, both in London and 
elsewhere, should find it an interesting problem, and a matter for scientific 
research upon their own initiative, to check the norms here tentatively 
suggested, alike in general abihty and in the special subjects of the 
ordinary curriculum, for children of different ages, of different sex, and 
of different social types : and to compare with these norms the standard 
of attainment actually existing among their own pupils and in their own 
schools. 

R. Blair. 
L.C.C. Education Offices, 

Victoria Embankment, W.C. 2. 
July, 1921. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 



The object of the following work is to present a provisional set of 
practical scales for measuring intellectual ability and educational 
attainments. They are designed for the use of teachers and of all who 
may wish to examine children in ordinary and special elementary schools. 
Tests with the necessary test-materials, standards by which to compare 
the results, instructions for administering the former and cautions 
for applying the latter, are given and discussed in detail. 

Intellectual ability is considered primarily in its broadest form, 
that commonly described as general intelligence ; and is treated as 
measurable by the most popular tests, those devised by Dr. Simon 
and the late Professor Binet. Supplementary tests for measuring 
intelligence and some suggestions for measuring specific abilities are 
appended ; but it is with the Binet-Simon scale that the earlier half 
of the book has in the main to do. The first memorandum deals 
with its practical use ; the second with its theoretical validity. In 
my endeavour to standardise the practical instructions I have received 
inestimable help both from Dr. Simon, the only surviving author of 
the scale, and from nearly every English psychologist who has hitherto 
had occasion to use it. In my endeavour to standardise the theoretical 
criteria, I have been concerned chiefly with the diagnosis of mental 
deficiency — the purpose for which the scale has been most widely 
employed. In this part of the work I have occasionally admitted, what 
elsewhere I have sought so far as possible to exclude, discussions of a 
more abstract and technical tone. It is my belief that all who adopt, 
and may perhaps refine, the methods of psychology, should, whether 
their interest be purely practical or partly theoretical, know something 
of the scientific foundations upon which those methods must be built. 

The third memorandum deals with the measurement of educa- 
tional attainments. In it I have limited myself to tests of the chief 
branches of the elementary school curriculum — reading, spelling, 
arithmetic, composition, and the simpler manual subjects. As before, 
I have had predominantly in mind the chscrimination of ordinary and 
special school cases. The tests themselves, together with practical 
instructions for applying and evaluating the tests, are again given at 
length ; but I have not thought it necessary to enlarge once more upon 
their theoretical basis. 

Here I desire to express, however inadequately, my gratitude 
to all — whether psychologists, medical officers, teachers, or children 
— who have assisted in the preparation of these scales. To the technical 
skill and ready assistance of Mr. A. W. Phillips, who has supervised the 



printing of these pages, the volume in its final form owes a particu- 
larly heavy debt. To my father, Dr. C. Barrow Burt, who has corrected 
the proof-sheets and compiled the index, my obligations are too deep 
for formal acknowledgment. Most of all my gratefulness is due to Dr. 
C. W. Kimmins, the Council's Chief Inspector, for his kindly sympathy 
and continuous encouragement during the past eight years. I may add 
that I shall always welcome data, criticisms, and suggestions of what- 
ever land, from those who may trouble to test the scales and to com- 
municate the fruit of their experience. 

This, too, is perhaps the place to insist upon one fundamental 
truth. Tests, infinitely more scientific than those set out below, can 
still be but the beginning, never the end, of the examination of the 
child. To take a young mind as it is, and delicately one by one to 
sound its notes and stops, to detect the smaller discords and appreciate 
the subtler harmonies, is more of an art than a science. The scientist 
may standardise the method ; to apply that method and to appraise 
the results, needs the tact, the experience, the imaginative insight of 
the teacher born and trained. 

Cyril Burt. 



20 December, 1920. 



Mental and Scholastic Tests. 



Memorandum I. 

THE BINET-SIMON SCALE : PRACTICAL USE OF THE METHOD. 



i.— THE GENERAL NATURE OF THE BINET-SIMON TESTS. 

Discrepancies between Ability and Attainment. 

A simple method for testing the abilities of children has become in 
educational administration an urgent practical need. No appeal is more 
often addressed to the psychologist than the demand for a mental footrule. 
Teachers, inspectors, school medical officers, care committee visitors, the 
officers of juvenile criminal courts, all have long felt the want for some such 
instrument ; many have endeavoured to devise their own. For school know- 
ledge, it is true, teachers should be able to invent appropriate tests. Every 
term — indeed every day — they are examining the educational gains of their 
pupils. But something more is needed. Attainment is a poor measure of 
capacity, and ignorance no proof of defect. Merely from school work, 
neither normal ability nor abnormal, neither high ability nor low, can con- 
clusively be inferred. 

To argue that wherever attainments are meagre, ability must also be 
low, will always be precarious. Poor health, poor homes, irregular attendance, 
lack of interest, want of will — these are far commoner as causes of in- 
ability to spell or calculate than are inherent weakness of intellect and 
genuine defect of mind. Certainly, the dull are usually backward ; but the 
backward are not necessarily dull. 

Nor does a high measure of ability always confer a high standard of 
school work. Popular criticisms of contemporary education are replete with 
instances of undetected genius, of school incompetents who succeed in after 
life, dull boys who make brilliant men. Newton and Barrow, Goldsmith and 
Sheridan, Watt and Stephenson, Wellington and Clive — the careers of these, 
and of many a celebrity still living, alike attest that a dunce at lessons may 
prove a prodigy in disguise. Yet the customary inference is not the true 
corollary. It is not so much our methods of instruction that are at fault as 
our methods of diagnosis. It is not for failing to adapt itself to these excep- 
tional personalities, but for failing to discover these exceptional personalities, 
that the school lies open to criticism. 

More than once a striking incongruity between ability and achievement 
was encountered or suspected by the Council's Chief Examiner and myself 
when reporting upon the efficiency of the scholarship system, and when inter- 
viewing, orally and individually, possible scholarship candidates in typical 
London schools. On the whole, it must be owned, with questions framed 
by experts deftly and discreetly, with answers marked by experts according 

B 



to an appropriate statistical scheme, the scholarship examination proves 
unexpectedly successful in selecting, by means of a brief, wholesale, written 
test, from some thirty thousand children annually, the ablest one or two 
per cent. But it may be surmised that the efficiency of the papers set becomes 
greater in proportion as their resemblance to a routine examination on school 
attainments becomes more and more remote ; and, for the rest, into secondary 
schools, constituted as they are at present, the cleverest genius, destitute of 
a certain minimum of academic knowledge, could hardly be admitted. Occa- 
sionally, it is true, an able child is found whose gifts have a technical bias, 
rather than an academic ; and whose intelligence, therefore, may be grossly 
underrated in school, unless it is judged by tests of manual construction 
rather than of scholastic knowledge. But too often it is through the neglect 
to discover three or four years ago the richness of his real capacity that the 
poverty of a child's attainments is observable to-day. A test of intelligence, 
applied at the age of seven or eight, would avert much unmerited failure at 
the age of ten or eleven. Among the brightest children in our schools not a 
few miss scholarships because at an earlier age their ignorance of scholastic 
rudiments has relegated them to a class below their actual merits. They 
have remained, like sundials in the shade, with their available powers unused, 
because their presence has been left un illuminated. 1 

Even with average children, the amount and accuracy of their present 
knowledge forms but a rough, uncertain index of their power to acquire more 
knowledge. No matter how homogeneous a class may be at the beginning 
of a term, by the end of it a few will have forged far ahead of the majority ; 
and others lag behind. It is what a child can learn, not what he has learnt, 
that should count. The golden maxim should be this : promote by attain- 
ment rather than by age, and by ability rather than by attainment. In too 
many schools the order of precedence is inverted. First consideration is 
always to be accorded to the child's innate intelligence. 

Hence, in all questions of school organisation, in all questions of class 
promotion, but above everything, where subnormal or supernormal pupils 
are concerned, the teacher, besides examining the child's acquired school know- 
ledge, should also possess some means of gauging his inborn mental capacity. 

The Practical Value of Intelligence Tests. 

The children for which such tests are pre-eminently needed are those 
who are definitely above or definitely below the average. And among these 
it is not for the extreme types merely that the want of a test is most im- 
perative — for the rarer cases of mental defect on the one hand, or of scholar- 
ship ability on the other. Rather it is upon the large mass of moderate ability 
and of moderate disability that notice should more frequently be focussed — 
upon the backward pupils of the ordinary school, and upon the future candi- 
dates for the central school. For them the means of early discrimination 
might well be improved. For them, too, even such special accommodation 

I 1 ) There is a growing tendency in more advanced areas to retain children in the infants' department 
until a later age than has hitherto been usual. There is also a tendency in the more advanced infants' depart- 
ments to postpone to a later age the formal scholastic work. A senior department receiving a child at the 
age of eight has but two years to thrust him forward to the level of standard VI. by the time he sits for 
the Junior County Scholarship Examination. Too often children promoted from the infants' departments 
under such conditions are examined with formal tests of elementary scholastic work, and judged by the- 
standard of attainment traditional in the senior school. As a consequence, even the brightest may appear 
educationally backward, and for the next eighteen months be destined to slow instead of rapid promotion. 
An intelligence test, such as that described below, if employed instead of, or in addition to, the formal tests 
of reading and number, would enable the cleverest infants both to be transferred at an earlier age from the 
infants' department to the senior, and. within the senior, to be promoted more speedily through the lower 
classes of the school. 



3 

as is available might profitably be enlarged. A closer search must yield a 
larger number. 

It is, then, among such cases, that the tests will most widely be employed. 
The defective may be discovered by the medical officer ; the scholarship 
winner may be discovered by the scholarship examination ; but the detec- 
tion of intermediate degrees of mental ability or weakness must rest 
primarily, if not solely, with the teacher. To the teacher, therefore, some 
handy method of estimating intelligence from the earliest ages of school life 
should be, for this purpose, a welcome, practical boon. 

For assessing mental ability apart from school attainments the simplest 
and most celebrated tests in existence are those popularly associated with 
the joint names of Binet and Simon. They are not, as we shall find, the 
most accurate. But a technique thoroughly scientific could not possibly be 
employed by the schoolmaster without special laboratory experience. And 
all that he needs is a practical guide with whose authority he is already 
familiar. 

To measure ability with exactitude is a difficult, technical feat. Indeed, 
the general employment of tests among teachers some psychologists would 
wholly deprecate. But, provided it is explicitly realised that to the diagnosis 
of a teacher untrained in psychological method no final validity can attach, 
little harm and much good will ensue. To make psychological examinations, 
to pronounce judgments upon children's mentality, is part of a teacher's 
professional duty. A test of intelligence will confer no new functions : it 
can only tender additional aid. With a simple scientific invention a layman 
may accomplish much that before was possible to none but the expert. But 
the use of such a device must always be mechanical, and its scope confined 
and limited. Put into a child's hand a pair of compasses, and he will draw 
circles Giotto might envy. Yet no one unpractised in draughtsmanship, 
armed merely with this instrument, would expect forthwith to delineate the 
complete and faithful portrait of a man. 

Construction of the Binet-Simon Scale. 

The Binet-Simon scale consists of about sixty graded tests for measuring 
the intelligence of school children. The tests were originally devised by two 
Parisian psychologists, Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon, to assist adminis- 
trative authorities in examining school children suspected of mental deficiency 
and recommended for transfer from the ordinary school to special classes. 
More particularly the inventors had in mind the French Commission 
nominated, in 1904, a few months before the publication of their first pro- 
posals, by the Minister of Public Instruction, to enquire into the training of 
defectives. The scale has since been widely used in many different countries, 
most of all in the United States. It is explicitly recommended for use in 
doubtful cases of suspected deficiency by the Chief Medical Officer of the 
Board of Education in his Annual Report ; and a summary of the entire 
scale is there published. 1 

The construction of the scale can be best understood by reference to the 
copy of the record-card appended on page 5. Binet's final version, pub- 
lished in his sole name, and known as the 1911 scale, contained fifty-four 
tests. In theory, as indicated by the schedule, five tests were assigned to 
each age from three years to adult life. Actually, however, the years XI., 
XIII., and XIV., and, apparently by oversight, one test for age IV., were 
omitted. 

(*) See Annual Report for 1912 (Appendix E., " Schedule of Medical Examination of Children for Mental 
Defect," pp. 373-375). 



Intelligence was to be measured in terms of Mental Age. An average 
child aged 7, for example, should pass all the tests up to and including 
those assigned to age VII., 1 but should fail in every test for a later age. 
Similarly, for the other years. A child, therefore, whose mental ability was 
unknown, was to be given first the tests allotted to his own age ; if he passed 
these, he was regarded as normal ; if he failed, he was given the easier 
tests assigned to lower ages. A child who could pass tests up to and in- 
cluding those for age VI. only, was marked with a mental age of VI., 
regardless of his true age by the almanac. If his calendar age was seven, he 
would be recorded as backward or " retarded " by one year, his so-called 
mental age being subtracted from his real or chronological age. A retarda- 
tion of two years in children under nine, and of three years in children over 
nine, was held indicative of mental deficiency. 

In practice a child seldom breaks down abruptly at the end of one of 
the test-groups. Accordingly, with a child who passes stray tests from several 
ages Binet suggested that to the highest age for which all the tests 
are passed without exception the examiner should add one-fifth of a year 
for every additional test thus sporadically passed. Clearly, were the scale 
complete, comprising five tests for every year from age one onwards, we 
should but need to add up the number of tests passed and then divide by 
five in order to obtain the mental measurement directly in terms of mental 
years. 

Tests of Specific Capacities. 

The tests seem originally to have been chosen to yield information about 
specific capacities as well as about intelligence as a whole. 2 The plan which 
I have used in the record card facilitates such an analysis. The arrange- 
ment is based upon a broad classification of the tests according to their 
special nature. In the first column are inserted the computation and money 
tests ; in the second the drawing tests ; in the third the tests of weight- 
discrimination and of memory for numbers ; those of line-discrimination, of 
memory for sentences, of reasoning (definition, differences, etc.) in the 
fourth ; the observation tests (pictures) in the fifth ; and the literary tests 
(reading, writing, dictation) to the right of the double line. With a child, 
therefore, who succeeds in such practical tests as drawing and counting 
money, but fails, as so many merely backward children do, principally in 
memory and literary tests, the unevenness of attainment may be instantly 
revealed by a single glance at his record. 3 

To discover that a child is backward is of value. To measure exactly 
how much he is backward is of greater value. But to analyse precisely 
where and for what reason he is backward constitutes a problem of the 
highest practical importance. And, this being so, it is unfortunate that the 
serial gradation of the same test was not adopted systematically for every 
specific function, and carried without a break through every mental age. 

(') In accordance with the usual convention mental ages are printed in Roman numerals, and chrono- 
logical ages in Arabic. 

( 2 ) Binet, in his earlier articles, speaks of intelligence as composed of " faculties " — attention, memory 
sensorial intelligence, comparison, abstraction, and so forth. (Compare, e.g.. The Intelligence of the Feeble- 
minded, p. 133.) But later this assumption retreats into the background. Dr. Simon doubts, he tells me, 
whether light can be thrown upon special capacities by means of the tests. And certainly such light as they 
yield in this quarter is but a general dim glimmer with an occasional illuminating flash. 

( 3 ) This record card, based as it is upon the age-assignments of the earlier French versions, is not 
recommended for use in an unmodified form. It formed the starting-point of our investigations ; and is 
printed here solely to illustrate the construction of the scale. 



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6 

Need for an English Standardisation of the Tests. 

The success of a scale so constructed turns upon two preliminary 
conditions : the exact standardisation of the procedure, and the exact 
standardisation of the results. By the Binet-Simon tests as hitherto used in 
this country neither of these twin requirements is adequately fulfilled. 

In England, indeed, a standardisation of the procedure has scarcely 
been attempted. Special adaptations have been constructed for Italy, for 
Germany, for Russia, for Sweden, for Turkey, and for Japan. And, in 
America, guides, manuals, and nutshell syllabi have appeared almost beyond 
count. But no textbook has been published specifically for British use. 1 
English investigators are forced to improvise each his own adaptation, from 
the French or from the American, or in the light of the difficulties and mis- 
constructions he himself encounters in testing his examinees. The inevitable 
consequence is a diversity in method which would entirely stultify Binet's 
age-assignments, even were those age-assignments directly applicable to 
English children. 

Those conversant with but one version of the tests barely appreciate 
what a playground the scale has proved for variation in technique. For 
practically every test there are almost as many procedures as investigators. 
Illustrations of the more salient divergences may perhaps be cited ; they 
will serve to demonstrate the pitfalls that beset the translator, and to impress 
the examiner with the paramount importance of strict uniformity in method. 

The most flagrant variations arise from the attempt to substitute for 
French coins their English equivalents. Take, for example, Test 43. Here 
Binet required the child to name the nine commonest coins. In the English 
currency these are Jd., Jd., Id., 6d., Is., 2s., 2s. 6d., 10s., and £1. To begin 
with, the florin and the half-crown occasion, by their similarity, a confusion 
which is not presented by any of the French coins : and uniformity becomes 
still more elusive with the introduction of Treasury notes of varying designs. 
Further, instead of the farthing, two investigators — Mclntyre and Rogers — 
employ a five-shilling piece ; and another — Moore — adds a threepenny 
piece. Test 40 repeats all these perplexities, and adds one or two of its own. 
Here the French child is provided with the common coins, and is asked to 
return change for four sous out of a franc What is the English equivalent ? 
Moore requires change for twopence out of a shilling ; Mclntyre and Rogers 
change for fourpence out of a florin — a much harder feat. In Test 32 the 
latter ask the children to add two halfpennies and two sixpences instead of 
the usual three halfpennies and three pennies ; others adopt an American 
form of the test, and require the child to add the amount in stamps. Nor 
are the coinage tests by any means the sole source of variation. The whole 
process of turning French instructions into English idiom is prolific in 

(') Miss Johnston, one of the first to employ the Binet tests, published an early description in the Training 
College Record (November, 1910. Cf. J. Exp. Ped., March and November. 1911). But it is brief ; and now 
I understand, difficult to procure. Mr. Winch's description {Child Study, Vol. VI.. Nos. 7 and following), 
which has appeared since my standardisation was commenced, has the rare merit of being written by one 
who knows from experience how to give directions to children ; but it does not always supply the express 
formula to be recited by the examiner ; and at times departs considerably from Binet's own instructions 
His earlier schedule (Mental Tests for Backward and Defective Children, published by Ralph, Holland and Co. 
35 and 36 Temple Chambers, E.C.) is in the former particular quite explicit. It is, indeed, more nearly " fool- 
proof " than any of the other versions. But it deviates quite as definitely from Binet. His articles do not 
carry the tests beyond infants' schools ; and his schedule only carries them as far as tests for age VIII. For 
the purpose of securing the most significant answers his departures, in my view, are usually better than the 
originals. He has, for example, boldly and excellently redrawn both the " pretty " and " ugly " faces and 
the faces with missing features. But the new drawings yield results which, though less equivocal in them- 
selves, are yet hardly comparable with other investigations. His age-assignments, as well as those of Miss 
Johnston, will be found in an Appendix (p. 212) ; and the more important of his modifications in notes to my 
own instructions (pp. 2 4-68). 



alternatives of unequal difficulty. 1 Notably the versions of the sentences 
to be memorised differ enormously ; and in rendering the instructions to be 
recited to the candidate it is almost impossible to preserve the nuances of 
the original. Finally, the time-limits prescribed by the French authors are 
rigidly observed here, entirely ignored there, and superseded elsewhere by 
personal innovations. Plainly, therefore, there is an urgent case for stan- 
dardising a uniform procedure. 

Nor is the standardisation of the results in any way more exact. As yet 
no one in this country has compiled a trustworthy series of age-norms. The 
special function of the tests is to facilitate the diagnosis of mental deficiency. 
This was their original purpose ; and this will be the ground of their increasing 
use. The norms, therefore, would require for their establishment the applica- 
tion of the same procedure to large samples, not only of normal, but also of 
defective school children, with a view to averaging the mental ages for each. 
No such comparative enquiry has hitherto been made. 

Imperfect though the Binet scale may be, yet, until schools, courts, and 
prisons are equipped with psychological experts, its vogue will continue, and 
its popularity advance at a constantly accelerated rate. Those, therefore, 
who use the tests should use them in the least defective form. They should 
not be left to extemporise, in the intervals of routine duties, their own methods 
and their own criteria, or else be constrained to adopt uncritically norms of 
performances which may be accurate perhaps in Paris or California, but are 
unquestionably fallacious for England. They should be supplied with a 
standardised procedure and with standardised norms — a procedure which 
has been experimentally adjusted to English idioms and to English customs, 
norms which have been statistically deduced from extensive trials with 
English children, trained in English homes and taught in English schools. 

The Present Version. 

The version that follows is based upon a careful translation of the 
relevant parts in the original articles of Binet and Simon. To translate 
a set of instructions and problems first standardised upon foreign 
children is from its very nature a task fraught with difficulties. Wherever 
there seemed a choice of adequate renderings, I have been guided always 
by the canon, as comprehensive as it is concise, which Dr. Simon has in his 
letters on the matter repeatedly urged: " Le bonne traduction est elle qui 
d'apres I 'experience laisse Vepreuve a I'dge auquel elle est placee." Dr. Simon 
has himself done me the honour and kindness of examining my penultimate 
version, and has not only replied in detail to numerous specific questions, 
but fully annotated the suggestions with which he found himself in disagree- 
ment. In the very few instances where I have not accepted the change he 
would propose, I have given both my reasons and his criticisms. To express 
my gratitude for his trouble and generosity is more than I find it possible 
to do. 

During the last eight years typewritten copies of the translated instruc- 
tions have been in circulation and in use among a small but increasing band of 
teachers and experimenters. These investigators have from time to time com- 
municated valuable improvements in the phrasing of the formulae or in the 
explanation of the procedure. Amended versions have since been submitted 
to all the English psychologists who have carried out researches by means 
of the scale, and to Dr. Simon himself. Shortly before his death in 1911, 

(') Miss Town's authorised translation for American examiners of the practical instructions given in the 
Bulletin de la Societe libre pour V Etude Psychologique de V Enfant, actually gives, for many of the questions, 
one rendering in the text and a different one in the summary in the Appendix. 



8 

M. Binet also wrote expressing his interest in our efforts. The final version, 
given in the following pages, owes rrruch to the criticisms and suggestions 
so magnanimously bestowed. 1 

Of the various recensions published by Binet, that known as the 1908 
scale is still by several investigators preferred to his last, that of 1911. The 
1908 scale contained fifty-nine tests. The number of tests assigned to each 
age varied from four to eight. Of these, fifty were retained in the later 
series ; nine were omitted, chiefly on the ground of their scholastic nature. 
Four new tests in the new version brought its total up to fifty-four — five for 
each of eleven ages with the exception of age four, which has four. 

Many examiners, especially those who started their records with the 
earlier scale, have found the omissions and insertions of the 1911 version 
both inconvenient and unnecessary. In order, therefore, that any person 
adopting the present version may render his results comparable with those 
secured by either the 1908 or the 1911 scale, every test in the two scales 
has been incorporated. Further, the set of memory tests has been com- 
pleted by the addition of " 4 numbers " and " 6 numbers " — the latter 
already added by Goddard, Bobertag, and Terman, and both already used 
by many investigators to provide progressive practice with equal incre- 
ments of difficulty. The entire version described below thus embraces 
sixty-five tests. 

In their application to the English child the tests are found to require 
much reassortment both in the order of difficulty and in the age-assignments, 
as laid down originally by Binet and Simon. Order and assignment have, 
in consequence, been radically reinvestigated ; and the tests are now 
arranged in a revised seriation and classified anew for age. The changes 
are of first importance. With Binet's original age-assignments, many older 
London children, who are undoubtedly normal, appear defective ; and many 
younger children, who are undoubtedly defective, prove hard to convict of 
deficiency. 

The modifications introduced into the procedure are almost entirely 
confined to such as are inevitably involved in translating the tests from 
French into English, and in transferring the scale and its materials from one 
country to another. That the tests, as is claimed of certain wines, have been 
improved in their quality by the passage of the Channel is more than I 
venture to pretend ; but at least it has not, I trust, been injured. In a few 
places an attempt has been made to rectify what seemed an obvious slip, 
or to make clear what seemed an unintentional obscurity. But, where any 
definite departure from the original has been made, the changes or insertions 
are, in the detailed description that follows, placed within brackets. In 
every case the alterations are slight ; and in every case they are introduced 
merely to carry out more completely the spirit of the original. 

That I have adopted principles so tame and conservative does not imply 
that I think or have found the plan of the original version faultless. On the 
contrary, I am of opinion that, for exact and scientific purposes, an entirely 
new scale, or rather a new series of scales, must be constructed, built up 
afresh from the very foundation ; to tamper or tinker with the old will not 
be sufficient. So ambitious a reconstruction, however, is not my present aim. 

f 1 ) I have to acknowledge my grateful indebtedness, not only to Dr. Simon, but to the following who also 
read and criticised the typescript of my earlier versions : Miss M. Bridie, Mr. B. Duniville, Professor J. A. 
Green. Miss K. Johnston, Dr. E. 0. Lewis, Dr. J. L. Mclntyre, Mr. B. C. Moore, Professor Agnes Sogers, 
Miss N. G. Taylor, and Mr. W. H. Winch, and the numerous teachers both at London and Liverpool who 
have assisted in the whole enquiry. Mile. Erna Beiss, member of the " Societe" pour l'Etude Psycboloeique 
de l'Enfant," who has attended Dr. Simon's classes, has kindly acted as intermediary between Dr. Simon 
and myself. 



9 

It is an undertaking that would demand not a single research, but a life- 
time of researches. And, before the novelty could be accepted, an impartial 
criticism of the scales to be displaced should first be issued, based upon a fair 
and extended trial of those scales in their original authentic form — in a form 
where the results shall be comparable with both those of the first authors and 
those of subsequent investigators, and not in a modified and doctored version, 
half old, half new. 

For these reasons it has seemed desirable to follow as narrowly as possible 
the descriptions given by Binet and Simon themselves. The scope of com- 
parison thus available will be far wider than if any later revision — the 
" Vineland," the " Stanford," the " Point-Scale," or some new personal 
adaptation suited to London children and to the adapter's favourite theories 
— had been chosen as the foundation of the work. Accordingly, whether 
as merit or demerit, it may, I think, fairly be claimed that the following 
version adheres more closely to the original procedure of the French authors 
than any of the published revisions. 

2.— GENERAL DIRECTIONS FOR THE USE OF THE SCALE. 

Order of Giving the Tests. 

The tests are set out below in an inverse order of difficulty ; that is to 
say, a test that, on an average, is passed by a larger percentage of children 
in the ordinary elementary schools of London is placed earlier in the list 
than one passed by a smaller percentage. In theory, the examiner follows 
this programme, the principle being to work from the easier to the harder 
tests, until the child can do no more. But to ply a child of medium age and 
ability with either the easiest or the hardest of the set would be superfluous. 
Hence in practice Binet has advised examiners to begin with tests suited 
to the child's true age : to work backward, if necessary, until he succeeds with 
at least five consecutive tests, and then to work forward, until he fails with at 
least a further consecutive five. The order of difficulty, however, varies pro- 
foundly from one school to another. In particular, certain tests, such as 
picture (interpretation), suggestion (lines), and most of the tests with coins, 
prove disproportionately simple for defectives. Accordingly, to avoid missing 
any problem that a child may possibly perform, it is advisable to conduct the 
child over an extensive range of tests. To every child should be given, if time 
permits, tests for at least four consecutive age-groups. The examination 
will thus last, not twenty minutes, as stated by Binet and Simon, but between 
thirty and forty minutes. With children under seven, half an hour is the 
longest period for which the examination should be protracted without a 
break. When, therefore, the child has to be put through the numerous tests 
assigned below to ages V. and VI., and, generally, upon the first sign of 
flagging or fatigue, the sitting should be adjourned, and only resumed after 
a few minutes' intermission spent by the child, if possible, moving in the 
open air. 

With a defective, to commence, as above advised, upon tests appropriate 
to his actual age, would mean working backward from harder to easier. 
This is against the general rule. But the order of increasing difficulty should 
not be followed slavishly. I would suggest that the ensuing considerations 
should govern the sequence of presentation : — 

(1) The initial tests should act as shock-absorbers ; their purpose 
is to allay the nervousness and engage the interest of the child, and 
at the same time enable the examiner to obtain a broad preliminary 
estimate of the child's general level, with an eye to concentrating 



10 

later upon more crucial tests, that is, upon such, and such alone, as 
may seem not too far above or below his capacity to be worth the toil 
of applying. With this object the picture test is commonly selected 
as the first. Pictures, it is said, touch instantly upon a responsive 
chord in the most lethargic child ; and, according to the Binet- 
Simon scale, the replies will indicate one of at least three alternative 
levels — age III., VI., or XII. For London children mentally between 
V. and IX. years I find naming coins even more successful. The 
sight of a penny will, as a rule, fetch a sparkle to the eye and a 
word to the lips, when pictures richer in colour and action than 
the Binet-Simon series have left the child listless and mute. Some 
children are a little apprehensive of unusual allurements proffered by 
a stranger ; their suspicions may be disarmed by opening with more 
business-like questions as to name and age for the younger children, 
or with familiar school tests, such as reading, or reciting the week- 
days or the months, for the older. 

(2) As soon as the child has become habituated to the exami- 
ner's voice, the successive memory tests {syllables and numbers) may 
be applied. The method demands that every child should start 
from the shortest series, and gradually pass to the harder, thus 
obtaining a regular amount of practice. The two memory-tests 
consequently provide in a brief space of time a broad range of 
exercises over which the child's ability may be judged. 

(3) As soon as the examiner has a rough notion of the ages 
between which the child must be tested more particularly, he should 
proceed to the easier and shorter of the crucial tests thus indicated. 
Anything likely to discourage or fatigue the child should not be 
given too early in the sitting. 

(4) Tests requiring alertness or effort, however, should not be 
postponed to the very end. The oral problem-tests — definitions, 
absurdities, easy and hard questions, sentence-building, rhymes — 
should, therefore, be put when the child has warmed up to the 
process — having overcome his initial shyness, not yet jaded or 
bored, pleased perhaps by his success over the simpler tests, not 
yet disheartened by his failures at the harder. 

(5) Being of a routine nature, the scholastic tests — reading, 
weekdays, months — may, if not already given, follow those tests 
that exact deeper thought and impose a harder strain. 

(6) The tests requiring apparatus, or demanding movement on 
the part of the child — drawing, writing, weights, triple errand, 
divided card — may be reserved for the close of the sitting. They 
furnish a relief from the tedium of incessant question and answer ; 
and may at times be of service earlier in the sitting if the child 
shows signs of breaking down through emotion or fatigue. It is, 
indeed, Dr. Simon's habitual practice to intersperse such tests 
throughout the examination, and so continually to refresh the child 
by as much change and variety as possible. But, as a rule, the 
disturbance of papers, chairs, and tables makes it convenient to 
postpone these tests until the end. 

(7) Apart, however, from these special considerations, the 
general principle is to work from the easier test to the harder. And, 
before the child is dismissed, the examiner should glance through 
his records to see that, in disarranging the order of difficulty to 
suit the varying mood of his examinee, no test, whose issue is 
doubtful, has been left a blank. 



11 

Records. 

For recording the results three methods are in general use, based respec- 
tively on what may be termed the schedule-system, the card-system, and 
the register-system : — 

(1) The method favoured apparently by most American in- 
vestigators requires a separate schedule for each child. These 
schedules usually consist of a folded quarto or foolscap sheet similar 
to that reproduced on pages 1 9-23. Upon each is printed, in summary 
form, the questions to be asked, and the time to be allowed. Blank 
spaces are left in which the child's replies may be entered in full. 
To the novice some such plan is helpful for practice. But, once 
the details of the instructions have been learnt by the examiner, 
such full directions for giving the tests (only a few of which 
are, of course, required for any given child) become, when printed 
afresh upon every record, wasteful, cumbersome, and confusing. 

(2) If the records of each child are to be kept separately, a 
card, such as that depicted on page 5, is by far the most con- 
venient. 1 On the front of the card, in the small compartments, 
some symbol indicating failure or success can be entered by the 
examiner ; and, if necessary, a figure or two can be affixed, touch- 
ing the general nature of the response — the number of seconds 
consumed, the proportion of answers correct — or some initial letter 
added indicating the general attitude of the child — his timidity 
(T), hesitation (H), fatigue (F), excessive willingness or over- 
anxiety (W + ), lack of willingness or negativism (W— or N), 
lack of attention or of interest (A— or I — ). Upon the back of the 
card the drawings and the writing can be executed by the child 
himself, and replies of special interest or comments upon special 
points appended by the examiner. The record can then be filed for 
reference in a card-index drawer. 

(3) If during the same enquiry a large number of children are 
to be tested, by far the most economical system is that modelled on 
the plan of the ordinary mark- or attendance-register. In a square- 
ruled note-book the names or numbers of the tests are entered in 
order along the margin at the top, and the names and ages of the 
children tested down the margin at the left. If several pages are 
needed, the inner leaves may be cut back an inch or two at the 
top to save re-writing the test-headings afresh on each opening. 
There is thus a horizontal row of squares for every child, and a 
vertical column for every test. For each child's success in each of 
the tests the symbol " 1 " may be entered ; and for each failure 
the symbol "0." To cross-cast the marks for the tests, or to total 
those for the children, is then an easy matter. From time to time, 
as Binet has himself observed, the most experienced of examiners 
may entertain a doubt whether he should mark a given answer as 
a failure or as a success ; in this emergency " J " may be recorded ; 
" f " may be employed when the child appears to have succeeded 
in principle, although his performance does not conform strictly to 
prescription ; and " J " for the inverse case. Resort to such 
fractions should be an exception. To give the child a measure of 

{') Unless Binet's own arrangement, as there given, is specially preferred, the titles should be rearranged 
according to the order of difficulty and age-assignments shown in the schedule on pages 19-23. 



12 

credit for a partial or reasonable answer is not their purpose. Such 
a method of partial credits, although in the view of many revisers 
a desirable reform, 1 would conduce to higher total scores, and so 
subvert the accepted scheme of standardisation. Fractions repre- 
sent a shortcoming in the examiner, not in the child. 

Binet's own records were based upon a "register " plan. But, as he 
rightly urges, the list of marks or symbols should be supplemented by a verba- 
tim statement of the child's replies, conscientiously recorded with the fulness 
and precision of a Boswell. For this he recommends a second note-book, 
and the assistance of a clerk or secretary, who may, he says, be " a child of 
thirteen or fourteen, provided he is intelligent and his recording receives a 
little supervision." 

Apart from the bare fact of failure or success, the most important 
points to record are these : (1) the commission of absurdities, either {a) in 
statement, or (b) in procedure ; and (2) mechanical automatism in the 
replies. Under these heads and sub-heads the following are the commoner 
types of error, (la) In memory for syllables, in sentence building and in 
mixed sentences — making up sentences that have no sense. In the picture 
test — lengthy disconnected catalogues of objects that are not visible. In 
date, coins, and reading — inventing impossible dates, non-existent coins, or 
statements not read. (16) In five weights — arranging the boxes neatly in 
rows or piles without any attempt to weigh them. In change — picking up 
any coins that lie to hand, without any attempt to observe their amount. 
(2) In memory for numbers, or counting backwards — gliding into a recitation 
of the numbers in their natural order. In definition and differences (concrete) 
— repeating the words to be defined or contrasted ("a table is a table," 
" glass is glass, and wood isn't "). 

Such peculiarities are often far more conclusive of deficiency than a 
mere backwardness in mental age. Indeed, it would be well to adopt Binet's 
further suggestion ; and note in the mark-register {e.g., by underlining the 
or 1) tests in which the child's responses are unusually absurd or excep- 
tionally good. 

Wherever time permits, however, the child's replies should be taken 
down sentence by sentence and word for word — always for the picture, 
definition, questions, and differences tests ; often for the absurdities and 
problems tests ; and as far as possible for the free association test (sixty words 
in three minutes). To a second person the nature of the replies actually uttered 
is likely to carry far more conviction than a bare series of marks, which 
can only indicate whether in the private opinion of the examiner those 
replies were successful or not. For some tests — for example, definition 
(class) and memory drawing — the standard of success is extremely arbitrary, 
and bound to waver from one investigator to another. In such tests, too, 
even one and the same examiner may wish, particularly in the early stages 
of his work, to revise his criterion of failure or success. Only when detailed 
records have been preserved can this be effected. 

For brief accounts a second note-book is inconvenient and unnecessary. 
The mark-register will serve. Its openings may be devoted to quantitative 
marks and to verbal notes alternately. And then, if every other leaf is cut 
down at the outer margin as well as at the top, the notes can be written 
on the second opening in a line with the child's name, which will itself be 
entered on the margin of the first. Thus, whether symbolic or verbal, all the 
records relating to the same child will be found together. 

t 1 ) Yerkes' Point-scale is a notable instance of this modification. (See below, p. 72). 



13 

Computation of Marks. 

The child's intelligence is to be measured by the total number of tests 
which, actually or by implication, he has successfully performed. Start, 
therefore, with the serial number of the test immediately before his first 
failure, and count on one for every subsequent success. Thus, the number 
of tests scored in the following record (Table I) would be 36 + 4 = 40. 

TABLE I- COMPUTATION OF MARKS. 

No. of test 1 to 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 

Score (Passed or Failed).. not given PPPPPFPP 

No. of test 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 to 65 

Score (Passed or Failed).. FPFPFFFFFnot given 

Reference to the age-assignments will show that the first thirty-five tests 
are passed, on an average, by a child of 7-0. The child in question has passed 
five tests beyond this number — forty in all ; whether they are in fact the 
first forty consecutively, is not material. Six tests beyond that number 
would have given him an extra year. He may therefore be credited with a 
mental age of 7f- years. 

The key facing page 19 enables the examiner to convert, by merely 
reading off the figures in the body or the margins of the chart, a given number 
of tests actually scored into an equivalent mental age, or to estimate from a 
given age the equivalent number of tests that should presumably be scored. 

The approximate mental ages that would have been assigned by Binet 
according to either the 1908 or the 1911 scale are shown in Table VII (p. 142). 
To obtain this Binet age more precisely in fractions (used by Binet himself only 
in the 1911 scale), the tests would need to be re-entered according to the order 
shown on the record card above (page 5) ; and the fifths of a year added 
to the highest age for which the child passes every test. This procedure, of 
course, will be adopted only by those who for some special purpose wish to 
compare their results with those of investigators following Binet's original 
versions. A failure in an earlier age was disregarded by this method, if the 
child completely recovered in a following year. Such recoveries are not 
common ; and the table annexed will, as a rule, be sufficiently accurate. 

Instead of mental age or retardation, many later investigators have 
preferred to measure ability in terms of a Mental Ratio. The mental ratio 
is found by dividing the mental age by the chronological age. 1 Thus, a 
child aged eight, with a mental age of VI., has a mental ratio of ■§-, or 75 per 
cent. It has been claimed that during school life the ratio remains approxi- 
mately constant. From this it would ensue that we have a means of pre- 
dicting at an early age the mental level which a child will reach in any 
subsequent year of life. 

The scale has been used to measure the intelligence, not only of sub- 
normal, but also of supernormal children. A child aged eight with a mental 
age of IX. is said to be advanced by one year. His mental ratio would be 
112 per cent. Genius has been assigned a mental ratio of 200 per cent, or 
over. Apparently this was the mental ratio of Sir Francis Galton ; for 
his early correspondence and attainments show that at the age of four to 
five his ability was equal to that of an average child of from eight to ten — 
that is, twice his actual age. In elementary schools ratios over 150 are 
hardly ever to be met. And, on the whole, with brighter children in older 

(') See below, p. 151. 



14 

years — for example, in examining candidates for Junior County Scholarships 
or Central Schools — the Binet-Simon scale gives unsafe estimates. Reason- 
ing tests, such as those described in an appendix 1 to these memoranda, have 
furnished results that are far more secure. 

Norms for London Children. 

In Table IX (p. 145) of the following memorandum will be found the 
average number of tests passed at each age by children of London schools, 
both ordinary elementary and special (M.D.). Here, as elsewhere, the ages 
indicate age last birthday : 9 — refers to children between 9 years months 
and 10 years months, and therefore on an average 9-5 years. In Table XVIII 
(p. 169) the ages and scores headed " borderline " give the limits suggested as 
demarcating the normal from the deficient. It should be observed that a slight 
deviation either above or below such a limit is not sufficient to prove either 
normality or deficiency. Nor, indeed, should a diagnosis of mental deficiency 
ever be made except by a properly qualified expert who will, of course, always 
explore other fields of information besides those afforded by pure psycho- 
logical tests. 2 

Local Revision of Norms. 

I have argued above that the method of applying the tests should 
follow with the utmost rigour that recommended by Binet and Simon. But 
a narrow rule of strict conformity, although imperative in the standardisation 
of the procedure, seems inexpedient in the standardisation of the results. In 
the results, however, comparability with Binet will still be attained only so 
long as they are expressed either in terms of the number of tests passed, or 
else in terms of mental ages derived according to Binet's own formula as 
enunciated on a previous page. If the mental age or ratio is computed 
according to the new scheme — a scheme necessitated by the progress of 
normal London school children and by the organisation of the London special 
schools — then immediate comparability ceases. Tables are given which 
enable either form of computation to be used. 

For new districts new standards will probably have to be found. 
Thus, if tests are used in rural districts, the age-assignments would require 
to be lowered considerably. 

Those who seek to procure fresh norms for other areas will save time and 
labour, if they adopt the recognised device of sampling ; to taste the quality 
of a wine and its vintage it is tmnecessary to drain the whole cask. For 
rough purposes the following procedure is recommended as rapid but tolerably 
exact. Suppose it is desired to establish a norm for ordinary children aged 
ten. To test every child is not essential. Were the whole group ranked in 
order of ability, then the middle child in the list (the "median ") would 
represent by his intelligence the average of his group, quite as adequately 
as the arithmetic mean computed in the usual way. In a well-organised school 
the children near the centre for ability should be found in the class or standard 
corresponding to the age in question. To determine this standard, subtract 
six from the age. For age ten, the typical representatives should thus be 
located in standard IV. In a class of fifty there may be twenty of that age. 
But here again none but the middle children need be tested. To discover 
them, do not, as is commonly done, ask the class teacher to pick out average 
pupils. Almost invariably you will be given children above the arithmetic 

(') See p. 237. 

( 2 ) I have given a list, and discussed the value, of these supplementary sources of evidence in Studies 
in Mental Inefficiency. I. 4„ p. 77. "The Definition and Diagnosis of Mental Deficiency." 



15 

mean. Let the teacher eliminate, one by one, the six best, and then the six 
poorest. The remaining six or eight, when tested, will yield an average almost 
identical with that obtained from working child by child through the whole 
age-group. If possible, several schools should be thus examined, as results 
fluctuate surprisingly from one school to another. Failing that, select a 
school which is approximately median, both as regards the teaching efficiency 
of the staff and as regards the social and cultural status of the pupils' homes ; 
and by the same abbreviated plan proceed to ascertain the norm required. 

The General Conduct of the Examination. 

Most of the following cautions were enunciated, and reiterated, by 
Binet himself. They appear obvious. Yet the experience of those who have 
supervised the Binet-testing carried out by students and field-workers is 
unanimous in stressing their need. 

Whenever it is proposed to use the tests for an examination by the 
Binet-Simon method, the examiner should adhere with meticulous exactitude 
to the procedure described for every test. In no way should he alter the word- 
ing of the instructions to be repeated to the child. The formulae may seem 
as arbitrary as the rules and rigmaroles of heraldry : but conventions are 
inevitable for uniformity ; and without uniformity comparison becomes 
invalid. The novice is apt to presume that the test involves doing the task 
as he himself would understand it from the directions, and is accordingly 
beguiled into improvising supplementary aids and explanations. Binet makes 
it clear that, in his method, this is erroneous ; he points out, for example, that 
Test 10 does not depend on estimating the child's power to discriminate 
lengths ; often it turns simply on his power to grasp that the phrase " point 
to the longer " implies comparison. Similarly, if the directions require the 
examiner to say, " Make a sentence with these three words," and if, fearing 
that the child may not understand the word " sentence," the examiner ex- 
plains, " Tell me something, and use these three words when you say it," then 
he altogether dislocates the age -assignment of the test. Thus the test consists 
not so much in the way the child carries out certain operations, but in the 
way he responds to certain standardised formulae. The scale, in effect, is 
virtually a graded " instructions test." 

Observe studiously the number of errors that may be countenanced ; 
and, in following the time-limits, be punctilious, yet not pedantic. From 
visitors who have watched the actual procedure of Binet or of Simon, I 
gather that these authors did not intend the time-limits always and every- 
where to be blindly enforced. 1 Some latitude is on occasion sanctioned. 
This, I apprehend, should vary with the test. In Test 51 (sixty words) 
three minutes should be allotted punctually to the second. In Tests 49 and 
50 (difficult questions and absurdities) the grace of a few additional seconds 
may at times be accorded. On the whole, I would suggest abiding tenaciously 
by the prescribed limit in the more mechanical tests, but, in the tests that 
demand more reflection, granting to the steady, cautious child a reasonable 
margin. 

During a test neither teach nor criticise. These are the two lapses to 
which, by sheer force of professional habit, the teacher most inclines. 
Criticism diminishes candour and destroys self-confidence. Instruction 
transforms the examinee's entire attitude toward the remainder of the tests ; 
and, by prolonging the interview, exhausts his attention and depletes his 
interest, before the test-series is concluded. Accordingly, so long as the 

(*) Dr. Simon's own reply on this point is : "Les temps indiques ne sont que des guides." 



16 

child is doing his best, greet every response as if entirely satisfactory. Give 
no hint before he answers ; no clue as to his correctness when he has replied. 

Be shy of the presumption that, because a child fails in the examination 
room, he will fail equally in duties out of school. Many a child, most of all 
the child from a poor home, leads a life as duplex as that of Jekyll and 
Hyde, just as he speaks two dialects, and obeys a double code of morals : 
in the street he plays the precocious urchin ; in the school he is put down 
as mentally deficient. Conversely, beware of inferring that, because a child 
knows a particular fact, or can do a particular duty outside the examination 
room, he should, therefore, succeed when the same task is set him as an oral 
test. Teachers, as a rule, are acutely disappointed in their children's per- 
formances at the Binet tests, and are eager to have the question rephrased 
or the time-limit extended. Fortunately, with most children, intellectual 
capacity is less affected by the artificiality of the conditions than are mood 
and disposition. Nevertheless, nearly every child loses much of his natural 
spontaneity ; and that his method produces this effect, Binet frankly avowed. 
" The examination," he says, " makes them in a certain way seem less in- 
telligent than they are ; this is the general rule." He does not, however, 
formulate the exception. Certain temperaments are braced and stimulated 
by the unusual situation. The plausible, sociable, excitable girl will often 
by her specious chatter appear brighter than she really is, particularly if her 
age entails a selection of tests that are predominantly linguistic. For such 
deviations allowance should be made after, not before, the mental age has 
been obtained by the usual method. 

"Every psychological test," it has been said, "is inevitably a test of 
intelligence." Too often it is forgotten that every test of intelligence is also 
a test of emotion. A neglect of the emotional aspect of an examination of 
intelligence may send many a normal child to the special school as mentally 
deficient. No matter how scrupulously uniform the procedure, how sym- 
pathetic the examiner's tone, the child's excitability will introduce disturb- 
ances in unknown quantity. To appeal constantly to the invigorating 
emotions — to pleasure, curiosity, pride, self-display, sociability, confidence ; 
and to banish utterly the depressing emotions — anxiety, fear, grief, disgust, 
shyness, self -suppression, sense of failure, these are the soundest rules. 
It is the business of the examiner to keep the subject in that state of exhilara- 
tion which enables him always to do his best. The child should quit the room 
ardent for still more tests, and displaying to his fellow-candidates a counte- 
nance which inspires them with an equal avidity to essay their own powers. 

Avoid all pomp and circumstance. By a tactful use of the customary 
civilities — a compliment, a handshake, or a smile — court and keep that 
atmosphere of intimacy which psychological testing presupposes. It was 
said of Mirabeau that, alike in private intercourse and on public occasions, 
he possessed le don terrible de familiarite. This "formidable gift " is one 
which the psychologist must possess and cultivate until it is formidable no 
longer. The test-room manner should be as proverbial for its tone of sym- 
pathy as the " bedside manner " for its urbanity and ease. With younger 
or low-grade children the tests should be conducted rather in the spirit of a 
game. With older children a friendly question about their evening hobbies 
or their pets at home, an admiring comment on some badge or ornament with 
which they have bedecked themselves for the solemn occasion, may instantly 
win their confidence. A child that remains stubbornly mute, or timidly 
monosyllabic, while standing stiffly to attention in the examination chamber, 
will often burst into speech if taken for the shortest walk in the open air. 1 In 

i 1 ) Terman also finds that with a strange child, " it is advantageous to go out of dODis with him for a 
little walk around the University buildings." • ' 



17 

any event, do not begin the tests proper until the child is at his ease, and 
rapport is established. Rather, defer the tests. 

Almost invariably, following Binet, the published instructions insist 
that the examiner should, where possible, be alone with the child. By 
their presence, it is true, teachers and relatives often render the child 
more hesitant and self-conscious ; sometimes, too, they are unable to resist 
a word of help, rebuke, correction, or extenuation. Yet many a child be- 
comes even more timid when closeted alone with a stranger ; and nearly always 
the teacher, from his previous knowledge, can cast a helpful gleam of light 
upon obscurities in the child's responses and behaviour. A giri, particularly 
a subnormal girl, should not, as a rule, be tested by a male examiner, except 
in the presence of a third person. The chaperon may conveniently be an 
intelligent elder girl from the same school, who may also perform the offices 
of a monitor, to usher in each examinee promptly, or even, as suggested by 
Binet, those of a secretary, to take down the replies in writing. 1 But, be they 
who they may, all spectators should keep unobtrusively in the background, 
and observe strict silence while the examinee remains in the room. 

With laudable anxiety, not only to catch the child's replies, but also to 
observe his attitude and procedure, the examiner is at first apt to discom- 
pose the child by fixing his eyes vigilantly upon him. Against such a habit 
Binet inserts an express caution. Towards the end of the sitting, when the 
child is busied with reading or writing, the examiner may venture to 
scrutinise him thoroughly. But at the start his glances should seem casual 
and uncritical. 

When a child does not answer immediately, the usual practice of Binet- 
testers is to wait five or ten seconds ; then repeat the question kindly ; then 
wait about half a minute patiently — punctuating the interval with tactful 
exclamations of encouragement 2 ; and so pass to the next question. 
With many borderline children, however, taciturnity and hesitation spring 
from a species of examination-paralysis, in its nature emotional rather 
than intellectual. In such cases, to evoke an answer, every possible resource, 
save a threat, a reprimand, a demonstration of the method or an explana- 
tion of the formulae, should be exploited. Where failures are due to external 
interruptions or to initial embarrassment, revert to the same test later. 

Periods of silence may grow as disconcerting as a running fire of interro- 
gation or perpetual censure and correction. Constantly, therefore, in a quiet 
tone, exhort a shy child with words which will stimulate, without helping 
him. It is a safe and sensible maxim never to touch the child. Yet there 
are exceptional moments when a friendly grasp of the shoulder, arm, or hand, 
as if to draw a reserved child nearer, or to turn a bashful child full face, 
may prove an effective stimulus, when all verbal incitement fails. As a 
rule, adapt your manner freely to each new personality ; but never adapt 
the questions. Throughout the sitting keep the child's mind brisk and 
busy. Never leave him waiting or watching while you write your notes 
or prepare your apparatus. 

Candidates about to be examined should not be left loitering outside 



(*) An adult assistant, familiar with the examiner's methods and acquirements, and able to take full 
notes in shorthand, is, of course, eminently preferable to a child. And I may here express my indebtedness 
to Miss V. G. Pelling and Miss P. C. Woursell, who, throughout the latter part of my investigations, rendered 
invaluable services both as recorders and in numerous other ways. 

( a ) Dr. Simon's note on this paragraph deserves to be quoted : " Nous encourageons, il me semble, plus 
que vous ne semble le faire. . . , ' Voyons. — Eh bien, mon bonhomme ? — Allons ! — Ca vient ? ' Nous 
taperions sur l'epaule du sujet ou secouerions sa main, — le tout avec douceur, affectueusement, sans brus- 
querie ; dans le ton general que vous indiquez, en effet, mais plus vivant — en rapport, je pense, avec notre 
temperament." 



TABLE II. 
KEY OR CONVERTING TEST-SCORES INTO MENTAL AGES. 

Fractions of a Year. 

•0-1 -2 -3 4 -5 -6 -7 -8 -9 1 
« 1 1 1 1 r i i i i i 

1 ^ 1 4 5 6 2 8. 9 ]0 H 12 

12 12 12 12 12 12 12 12 12 12 12 12 12 

( i 1 1 1 1 i 1 1 1 1 i 1 

YEARS 

SCORE IN TERMS OF TESTS 

i 1 1 1 1 1 1 

20 1 2 3 4 5 6 HI 

i 1 1 1 1 1 _ 

3-6 7 8 85 9 10 11 IV 

i 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 

4- 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 V 

i 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 | I 

5- 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 VI 

I 1 1 1 1 ra 

6- 31 32 33 34 35 W 

i 1 1 — 1 1 1 I 

7-35 36 37 38 39 40 41 VIII 

I 1 1 1 1 

8- 41 42 43 44 45 E 

f 1 1 1 ' 1 

9*45 46 46-5 47 48 X 

i — 1 1 1 I 1 

10' 48 49 50 50 5 51 52 53 XI 

i 1 1 1 

11 53 54 54-5 55 56 XII 

I 1 1 

12' 56 57 58 XIII 

13- 58 59 60 XIV 

» 

i 1 1 

14- 60 61 61-5 62 63 XV 

1 i : I 

15- 63 64 65 XVI 

To face page 19.] 



19 

These concessions, then, must be made in practical work. But in 
scientific enquiry and for comparable research it is wiser to forgo them. 
Here, of the two avoidable extremes, it is better bo side with the rabbis of 
precision than to consort with the apostles of laxity. 

Explanatory Note to Table II. — To find a child's mental age, look 
among the red figures in the body of the table for the total number of 
tests passed (both actually and by implication) ; say, 40. The figure on 
the same horizontal fine in the left-hand margin gives the year (7- . . . ), 
and the black figure immediately above in the top margin gives the 
additional fraction of a year ( . . . -8), corresponding to the test-score. 
The mental age, therefore, for a child who has passed 40 tests is 7-8. 

Conversely, to find the number of tests a child should pass at a 
given calendar age, say 11^-, look first down the left-hand margin for 
the year, and then along the lower row of fractions in the upper margin 
for the months. Imaginary straight lines drawn horizontally and 
vertically from the two numbers will intersect in the body of the table 
near a red figure which will show the number of tests that should be 
passed, namely 54. 



SCHEDULE II. 

Sample Record Form. 

(List of Binet-Simon Tests in average order of difficulty with 
revised age-assignments.) 

Name of Child Age Born 

School Standard Date of Test . . . . 



Number 
of Test. 


Border- 
line. 


Scale. 


Tests. 


Success of 
Eesponse. 








AGE III. 










(Children aged 2 to 3 should do half the following tests.) 




1 






Points to nose . . . . , eyes . . . . , mouth .... 




2 






Repeats 2 numbers (1 trial correct out of 3) : 
3 7 , 6 4 , 7 2 




3 


3| 




Knows sex. Boy or girl (if boy) .... 
Girl or boy (if girl) .... 




4 






Gives name . . . . , and surname .... 




5 






Names knife . . . . , key . . . . , penny .... 




6 






Pictures. Enumerates items in 2 out of 3 : 
(i).... (ii).... (hi).... 

AGE IV. 

(Children aged 3 to 4, or in grade 0, should do half the 
following tests.) 




7 


4| 




Repeats 6 syllables : " I am cold and hungry " 




8 






Repeats 3 numbers (1 trial correct out of 3) : 
9 14 , 2 8 6 , 5 3 9 




9 






Counts 4 pennies .... 




10 


H 




Points to longer of 2 lines (5 and 6 cm.) ; all 
trials correct .... 




11 






Points to prettier faces. (All 3 pairs correct.) 
1st. . . ., 2nd. . . ., 3rd. . . . pair. 





20 



Number 
of Test. 



Border- 
line. 



Scale. 



Tests. 



Success of 
Kesponse. 



13 

14 

15 
16 

17 

18 
19 



20 

21 
22 
23 

24 

25 
26 

27 

28 
29 
30 

31 



'08 



neither 



7i 



'08 



'08 



'08 



'08 



'08 



AGE V. 

(Children aged 4 to 5, or in grade i., should do half the 
following tests.) 

Performs triple order : (i) Key on table. . . ., 
(ii) shuts door . . . . , (iii) brings book .... 

Copies square recognisably . . . . 

Repeats 10 syllables : "His name is Jack ; 

he's such a naughty dog." 

Gives age .... 

Distinguishes morning and afternoon (if morn- 
ing) . . . . ; vice versa if afternoon .... 

Names 4 colours (in about 6 sees. : no error or 
second trial) : B . . . . , Y . . . . , G . . . . , 
R 

Repeats 4 numbers (1 trial correct out of 3) : 
3 6 8 1 , 5 7 4 9 , 8 5 2 6 

Compares 2 weights (all trials correct except 
first random) : (i) 3 and 12 g. . . . (ii) 6 and 
15g.... (iii) 3 and 12 g.... 

Procedure : 



AGE VI. 

(Children aged 5 to 6, or in grade ii., should do half the 
following tests.) 

Knows (without counting) number of fingers 
on right hand ..... left hand ..... both 



Counts 13 pennies. . . . 

Copies diamond recognisably .... 

Copies from script (legibly, but errors allowed): 
"See little Paul".... 

Names days of week without error in 10 sees. 

M , T , W , Th , F , 

S...., Su 

Names without error 4 coins : Is , Id , 

6d , W 

Reconstructs divided oblong card (in about 
| min.) Procedure : 

Defines by use (3 out of 5) : (i) horse. . . ., (ii) 
chair. . . . , (iii) mother. . . ., (iv) table. . . . , 
(v) fork 

Repeats 5 numbers (1 trial correct out of 3) : 
52947 ,63852 ,9731 S 

Pictures. Describes items in 2 out of 3 : (i) . . . . , 
(ii) , (iii) . . . . 

Repeats 16 syllables : " We are going for a 
walk ; will you give me that pretty 
bonnet?" 

Shows right hand. . . . ; left ear. . . . 



21 



Border- 
line. 



Scale. 



9J 



'08 



'08 



101 



11J 



neither 



12* 



'08 



Tests. 

AGE VII. 

(Children aged 6 to 7, or in grade iii., should do half the 
following tests.) 

Recognises missing features (3 out of 4) : (i) 
mouth...., (ii) eye...., (iii) nose...., 
(iv) arms. . . . 

Adds without error 3 pennies and 3 half- 
pennies (in 1 5 sees. ) . . . . 

States differences between concrete objects (2 
pairs out of 3 in 2 mins.) : (i) fly — butter- 
fly...., (ii) wood — glass...., (iii) paper — 
cardboard .... 

Writes from dictation (legibly, but errors 
allowed) : " The pretty little girls." 

AGE VIII. 

(Children aged 7 to 8, or in standard I., should do half the 
following tests.) 

Reads, without assistance, passage prescribed ; 
and recalls 2 items out of 20 ... .items. 

Answers easy questions (2 out of 3) : What 
would you do, — (i) if missed train. . . ., (ii) 
if broke something , (iii) if struck acci- 
dentally .... 

Counts backwards from 20 to 1 (in about 
30 sees., with only 1 error). . . . 

Gives full date. Day of week . . . . , day of 
month (3 days error allowed). . . ., month 
. . . . , year .... 

Gives change for 2d. out of Is. (coins to necessi- 
tate silver). Money given : ... .pennies, 
. . . .halfpennies, . . . .sixpence, . . . .other 
coins. 

Repeats 6 numbers (1 trial correct out of 3) : 

2 5 3 6 4 , 8 5 3 9 16 , 

4 7 15 82 

AGE IX. 

(Children aged 8 to 9, or in standard II., should do half 
the following tests.) 

Names the months of the year (in 15 sees., 
with only 1 error) : J....,F....,M...., 

A , M , J , Jy , A , 

S , O N , D 

Names 9 coins (in 40 sees., two trials if neces- 
sary) : id , 2s , 10s , 6d , 

Jd. . . . , 2s. 6d. . . . , Id , Is. . . . , £1 

Reads, without assistance, passage prescribed ; 
and recalls 6 items out of 20 items. 

Defines in terms superior to use (3 out of 5) : 
(i) horse. . . ., (ii) chair. . . ., (iii) mother, 
...., (iv) table .... , (v) fork 



Success of 
Response. 



99 



Number 
of Test 


Border- 
line. 


Scale. 


46 


13|- 




47 






48 




'11 


49 


14| 




50 






51 


15| 




52 






53 






54 






55 






56 







Tests. 

AGE X. 

(Children aged 9 to 10, or in standard III., should do half 
the following tests.) 

Arranges 5 weights in order (2 out of 3 trials 
correct, the whole in 3 mins.) : (i)...., 
(ii) . . . . , (iii) .... Procedure : . . . . 

Builds 2 sentences with 3 words in 1 min. : 
" London, money, river." Number of sen- 
tences given. . . ., viz. " " 

Draws 2 designs shown simultaneously for 10 
sees. (1£ correct) : (i) . . . ., (ii) .... 

AGE XI. 

(Children aged 10 to 11, or in standard IV., should do half 
the following tests.) 

Explains absurdities (3 out of 5 in 2 mins.) : 

(i) Cyclist killed ; may not get better 

(ii) Three brothers, — Jack, Tom, and self 

(iii) Railway accident ; not serious ; 47 
killed .... 

(iv) Girl cut in 18 pieces : killed herself 

(v) Shall not kill myself on Friday because un- 
lucky 

Answers difficult questions (3 out of 5 in 20 
sees, each) : 

(i) What to do, if late going to school 

(ii) What to do, if asked about boy, not 

known 

(iii) Why forgive unkindness if done when 

angry ? 

(iv) Why judge a person by what he does, not 

by what he says ? 

(v) What to do before undertaking something 

important 

Gives 60 words in 3 mins. Chief topics : 

/ / / 

/ / / 

Total 

Repeats 7 numbers (1 trial correct out of 3) : 

9684751 , 4820365 

5 9 2 8 13 6 

Builds 1 sentence with 3 words in 1 min. : 
" London, money, river." No. of sentences 
given . . . . , viz. " " 

AGE XII. 

(Children aged 11 to 12, or in standard V.. should do half 
the following tests.) 

Gives 3 rhymes (like Jill, hill, etc., in 1 min.) 
to "obey" : (i)----, (ii)----, (iii) - - - - 

Rearranges mixed sentences (2 out of 3 in 1 
min. each) : (i) . . . . , (ii) . . . . , (iii) .... 

Pictures. Interpretation (infers situation ; or 
suggests emotion, in 2 out of 3) : (i). . . ., 
(ii)...., (iii).... 



Success of 



23 



Number 
of Test. 



58 



59 



60 



Border- 
line. 



'11 



61 
62 



63 



64 



65 



'11 



'11 



Tests. 



AGE XIII. 

(Children aged 12 to 13, or in standard VI.. should do half 
the following tests.) 

Resists suggestion of lines (2 out of 3 equal 
pairs). Pairs : (iv) . . . . , (v) . . . . , (vi) .... 
.... correct judgments. 

Solves 2 circumstantial problems : (i) Dead 
body. . . ., (ii) man dying. . . . 

AGE XIV. 

(Children aged 13 to 14, or in standard VII., should do 
half the following tests.) 

Repeats 26 syllables : " The other morning I 
saw in the street a tiny yellow dog. Little 
Maurice has spoilt his new apron." 



Success of 
Eesponse. 



Defines abstract terms : (i) Kindness 

(ii) Justice (iii) Charity 

AGE XV. 

(Children aged 14 to 15, or in standard ex-VIL. should do 
hilf the following tests.) 

Draws the folded and cut paper : .... holes. 
Gives difference between abstract terms (2 out 
of 3): 

(i) idleness — laziness, 

(ii) poverty — misery, 

(iii) evolution — revolution, 

Draws the reversed triangle (C at B ; and AC 
along AB) : 
(i) ACB a right angle .... 
(ii) AC shorter than AB .... 
(iii) CB shortest .... 

AGE XVI 

(Children aged 15 to 16 should do at least one of the two 
following tests.) 

Re-states Hervieu's Reflection on Life : 

It is neither good nor bad, but mediocre ; 

for .... 

It is not so good as we wish, .... 

It is better than others wish for us .... 

Gives 3 differences between a President and a 
King: (i) Not hereditary. .. ., (ii) not life- 
long. . . ., (iii) powers more limited .... 



Total number of tests passed (actually or implicitly). 

Mental Age (M). (To be obtained by means of Table II.) 

Physical Age (A) 

Retardation or Advancement (A rv> M) 

(!) 



Mental Ratio 



24 

Explanatory Note. — The ages in the second column (headed "borderline") are 
set against figures in the preceding column, which indicate the number of tests that 
should, theoretically, be passed at each year specified before a child can be rated 
as normal. Thus, at age 10|, a child who answers more than thirty-seven tests is 
(so far as can be judged by the Binet-Simon scale) unfit for a special (M.D.) school. 
The examiner will abstain from inferring that the test thus numbered must neces- 
sarily be crucial for that age 1 ; and, generally, from using this theoretical indication 
in any rigid or mechanical fashion. 

The figures in the column headed " scale " indicate, for tests omitted in either 
the 1908 or the 1911 version, which scale included them. " Neither " indicates 
that the test specified was omitted in both. 



3. SPECIAL DIRECTIONS FOR THE INDIVIDUAL TESTS. 1 
The Use of the Directions. 

The following pages contain detailed directions for carrying out each 
of the tests in the Binet-Simon Scale. 

For clearness and for convenience of arrangement, details regarding 
materials required, instructions to be given, evaluations to be made, have 
been sorted severally under their appropriate heads. All general dis- 
cussion upon the psychological nature or purpose of each test has been 
omitted. And, for rapid reference, the instructions to be recited to the child, 
and the leading conditions in evaluating the child's replies (relating princi- 
pally to trials, errors, and time allowed), are printed in heavy type. 

Any addition to, or departure from, the original French instructions, 2 
which may change the difficulty of the test, is inserted in square brackets. 
The annotations also include a brief notice of the more important modifica- 
tions suggested in previous revisions. The allusions to Yerkes and to Terman 
refer to the new versions, known respectively as the " Point-Scale Method " 
and the " Stanford Revision and Extension." These versions digress very 
considerably from the Binet-Simon arrangement, not only in procedure, but 
also in the selection of tests. A brief description of them is, therefore, 
appended to this section. The allusions to other investigators refer to 
recensions published in their name. For strict comparability, either with 
the results of Binet and Simon, or with those of the present investigation, 
such recommendations should be ignored. They will, however, be found 
suggestive in elaborating a modified procedure, as already described. 

AGE III. 
1. — Understanding Simple Commands. 

Procedure. " Show me," 3 [" put your finger on," 4 " point to "]. . . . 

(i) " your nose ". . . . 

(ii) "your eyes " 

(ih) " your mouth." 

Each request (repeated several times, if necessary) should be given and 
answered separately. 

t 1 ) For crucial tests, see below, p. 169. 

( 2 ) For brevity and distinction I refer to the original French instructions by the title of "Binet," al- 
though the article most frequently cited was written and signed by both Binet and Simon ; and my refer- 
ences to "Dr. Simon" allude to notes privately communicated to me by Dr. Simon in commenting upon 
my version. 

( 3 ) I prefer the interrogative to the imperative ("will you show me ? " — or even "can you . . .?" 
though this may evoke nothing but a nod or a head-shake). With the interrogative it is easier to convey an 
impression of gentleness : the imperative is somewhat stern. Further, in the interrogative the auxiliary 



25 

Evaluation. All three injunctions should be correctly performed : but 
abundant repetition and free encouragement may first be' used. 5 (Opening 
the mouth, winking the eyes, etc., may be accepted.) 

[Terman adds (iv) "hair " ; requires three out of four to be correct ; 
but allows using a doll, and the questions : " Is this its (or your) nose ? . . . 
Then where is its {or your) nose ? "] 



Procedure. 
after me." 



2. — Repeating Numbers. 

"lam going to say some numbers. 



[Listen : and] say them 



(i) 
(ii) 

(hi) 
(iv) 
(v) 
(vi) 
(vii) 



"5" 

"3 7" 

"914" 

"3681" 

"5 29 47" 

"25 364" 

"9684751 



(For use only after failure in first set.) 

8" "9" 

6 4" "72" (Age III.) 

2 8 6" "539" (Age IV.) 

5 7 4 9" "8526" (Age V.) 

63852" "97318" (Age VI.) 

853916" "471582" (Age VIII.) 

4820365" "5928136" (Age XL) 6 



The rate should be two per second : utterance should be without rhythm, 
emphasis, or inflection. Do not tell the child if he is wrong. 7 Do not repeat 
the same series. Merely give him another chance with another series. Failure 
owing to interruption does not count. [While uttering the numbers or 
syllables, hold up the hand or finger to prevent the child starting to reply, 
before the entire phrase or list has been completed. Drop the hand as a signal 
to child that you have finished and he is to begin.] 

Evaluation. One correct repetition out of three trials counts as success. 
Note, therefore, the longest number the child can repeat. The age at which 
series of different lengths can be repeated is given in the last column above. 

The repetition of figures in their natural order, e.g., 9 6 4 5 6 7 8, should 
be noticed as an instance of automatism. The "perseveration" of correct 
numbers, given in the wrong order, is also of interest, though rarer. 



3. — Naming Own Sex. 

Procedure. " Are you a little boy or a little girl ? " (for a boy). " Are 
you a little girl or a little boy ? " (for a girl). 

The words " girl " and " boy " should be clearly and equally empha- 
sised. 

If the child says " yes " or "no," or merely echoes part of the phrase, 
repeat the question in the same form. [Dr. Simon does not, with some 

words serve to rouse the child's attention and accommodate his ear to the stranger's voice, before the really 
important words are uttered. In deference, however, to the representations of Mr. Dumville and others, and 
to Binet's own language, I finally adopted, both here and elsewhere, the imperative. In a vote taken among 
some 300 teachers the majority (64 per cent.) favoured the imperative ; the minority were chiefly mistresses 
in infants' schools. According to Dr. Simon, the examiner should never use the prhase " Will you . . .1" 
But I am told that the French equivalent for this interrogatory form would appear somewhat strained and 
circumlocutory when used with very young children. 

( 4 ) Dr. Simon considers " Put your finger on " to be too definite and exact. It is, however, used by 
Einet (Development of Intelligence, p. 185). 

( 5 ) Dr. Simon would not encourage the child too freely ; but he would also not insist too precisely that 
each of the three injunctions should be successfully performed. 

( 6 ) Repeating eight numbers appears harder than the hardest of the tests assigned to age XVI below. 
Terman would assign it to the level of " Superior Adults." 

( 7 ) There is, as Dr. Simon observes, no harm in saying : " That was nearly right," or " Try again ; listen 
carefully " phrases which imply that a mistake has been made. It is not the information, but the discour- 
agement that the examiner should guard against. 



26 

translators, allow the examiner to ask the two questions separately : " Are 
you a little girl ? " " Are you a little boy ? " Even then, it would be well 
to revert to the original form, to detect happy guesses.] 

4. — Giving Surname. 

Procedure. " What is your name ? " If the child merely gives his Chris- 
tian name, ask, " And what else ? " [Tommy] what ? [" What is your 

mother's (daddy's) name ? " (Melville.) "What do they call your mother ? 
. . . .Mrs what ? " (Dumville — much easier form).] 

Evaluation. If child gives the surname he has sometimes been known by 
— e.g., stepfather's, or mother's (when illegitimate) — record it as correct. 

5. — Naming Simple Objects. 

Materials, (i) A penny, (ii) a closed pocket knife, and (iii) a common 
kind of key. 

Procedure. " What is that ? " [or, " What is this called ? "], showing 
each object successively. 

Evaluation. All three must be named, but slight errors, such as 
" money," " pennies," " halfpenny " for " a penny " are allowable. 

The average order of ease is — penny, key, knife ; a pocket-knife, 
particularly closed, is not familiar to poorer children at this age. A table- 
knife (used by Winch) would be much easier. [Terman adds (iv) a watch, 
(v) a lead pencil ; and requires three correct responses out of five.] 

[Suggestibility may often be evoked by first asking the child to point 
to certain objects named, and then giving names of objects that are not in 
front of him, or inventing meaningless names. The same procedure may be 
adopted with the following test.] 

6. — Describing Pictures. 

Materials. Binet's three pictures — chosen as containing people, and 
suggesting a story, and having a certain standardised difficulty. (See Figures 
9 (a), (&), and (c), pp. 81-5, Appendix II.) 

There can, I think, be little doubt that pictures better printed, larger, 
coloured (as Saffiotti's), representing actions in progress (as Bobertag's), 
showing children (as both Bobertag's and Saffiotti's), would be much more 
appropriate than Binet's original engravings. Many investigators use 
pictures of their own. But the above alone have been standardised ; and, 
as Dr. Simon adds, tout est Id ! 

Procedure. "Look at this picture and tell me all about it." 1 Binet's 
instructions are : " What is this " ; and, if the child says, " a picture," 
" Tell me what you see there." It seems better, however, to avoid leading 
phrases like " What can you see in it ? " (which suggests enumeration), 
and " What are they doing ? " (which suggests interpretation). Repeat 
instructions once for each picture, if there is no answer. [Words of praise 
or encouragement alone may be added : " Isn't it a pretty picture ?. . . .Do 
you like it ? " Or even, " That's right," if the child is on the point of 
saying something, but is withheld by shyness.] 

Evaluation of Replies. Record the type of response given to the first 

(') Dr. Simon writes that the examiner should confine himself to: "What is there ? What do you 
see there ? What is represented ? Talk, please " ; and avoid questions esthetiqucs ou dt gout (" Do you like 
it? "). Here, however, I think it is difficult to compare the effect of different idioms and colloquialisms in 
French and English. 



27 

picture. If doubtful, use the second and third, and record the type of 
response most frequently given, i.e., employed for two pictures Out of three. 
Binet distinguishes three types of response corresponding to three stages of 
development. 

A. Enumeration (E). (Age III.) 
Replies giving a mere list of persons, objects, or details. 

E.g., (i) " A man, boy." 

(ii) " There's an old man and a lady," etc. 

(iii) " I can see a room with a chair, a table, and a looking-glass 
and there's a man and a sofa." 

Two items at least should be enumerated. If the child only gives one, 
do not ask, " Anything else ? " but proceed to another picture. [Terman 
requires three items in at least one picture out of three, given without 
urging.] 

One may also distinguish and note : (i) enumeration of people only ; 
(ii) enumeration also of objects — not common until age four. 

For Enumeration the average order of ease with the three pictures 
appears to be (i) man and woman, (ii) man and boy, (iii) convict. 

B. Description (D). (Age VI.) 

Phrases indicating actions or characteristics. E.g., 

(i) " They're pulling a cart." 

(ii) "A man and a woman sitting on a seat." " An old man asleep." 
(iii) "A man standing on a bed and trying to look out of the window." 
" A man looking at himself in the glass." 

For Description, the average order of ease is, in my results : (i) convict, 
(ii) man and woman, (iii) man and boy. This, however, is probably dependent 
on the order in which they are given. A child, having given enumerations 
for the first or first and second, may feel impelled to do more for the later 
picture. Intrinsically the man and boy would seem easiest for description- 

C. Interpretation (I). (Age XII.) 

Replies going beyond what is actually visible in the picture, and mention- 
ing the situation or emotion it suggests. E.g., 

(i) " They're moving." " They've a heavy load." " They can't pay 

their rent." " A rag-picker." 
(ii) " Miserable." " Poor." " Have no home." " The man is saying 
his prayers." "His daughter" (or "wife") "is sitting be- 
side him." " A man in trouble." 
(iii) " A prisoner." " He wants to get out." " He's trying to see 
what's in the yard." " He's lonely " or " thinking." " A 
man on board ship." 

For Interpretation, the average order of ease appears to be : (i) man 
and woman, (ii) convict, (iii) man and boy. This, however, does not mean 
that the first two pictures are intrinsically easy to interpret ; but rather 
that the picture of the man and boy more readily lends itself simply to 
enumerating items or describing actions, than to strict interpretation, while 
the picture of the man and woman lends itself to sentimental comments. 



28 



AGE IV. 

7. — Repeating Syllables. 

Procedure. "Listen" ["Listen again," if this is not the first memory 
test] " and say this after me." The phrases should be pronounced deliberately 
and with expression. Begin with (hi) ; but if the child remains silent the 
examiner may give him first a shorter sentence (i or ii), and then, apparently, 
try (iii) again. 

The sentences to which no age is assigned should be given to provide a 
little incidental practice. [For the shorter sentences, a more suitable form 
is, " Can you say ' father ' ? " " Now say. ..." etc.] 



(i) (2 syllables 

(ii) (4 syllables 

(iii) (6 syllables 

(iv) (8 syllables 

(v) (0 syllables 

(vi) (12 syllables 

(vii) (14 syllables 

(viii) (16 syllables 

(ix) (18 syllables 

(x) (20 syllables 

(xi) (26 syllables 



" Father." 

" My hat and shoes." 

" I am cold and hungry." (Age IV.) 

" Here is the cloth ; my hands are clean." 

" His name is Jack ; he's such a naughty dog." 

(Age V.) 
" It is raining outside ; and Tom is working hard." 
" We were having a jolly game ; I caught a little 

mouse." 
" We are going for a walk ; will you give me that 

pretty bonnet ? " (Age VI.) 
" Mabel has just torn her frock ; I have given twopence 

to that poor beggar." 
u We should never be cruel to birds. It is night ; and 

we are all going to bed." 
" The other morning I saw in the street a tiny yellow 

dog ; little Maurice has spoilt his new apron." 

(Age XIV.) 



Evaluation. Allow no error at all, except mispronunciations due to 
speech defects. [Binet's sentences appear to have been deliberately com- 
posed of two clauses. 1 This seems unfortunate, as even an intelligent child 
may accidentally forget one. In translating them I have endeavoured to keep 
the general sense of the original, while making the phraseology more natural 
for a child than a literal rendering would be. Winch (like Terman and 
others) uses a single connected sentence ; but (in a letter to me) agrees that a 
disconnected sentence is necessary for strict comparability. Winch requires 
two correct, Terman one, out of three sentences of the same length.] 



8. — Repeating Numbers. 

Procedure. " Listen : and say these numbers after me." 

(For use only after failure in first set.) 
"914" | "2 8 6" "5 3 9" 

Evaluation. One correct repetition out of three trials counts as success. 
(See p. 25. Test 2.) 

(M Dr. Simon thinks that the recurrent disjunction is " ni voulu, ni essentiel." He adds, however, that 
in preliminary trials of a chance assortment those sentences were probably found to present least difficulty 
to the child's comprehension which happened to consist of two separate clauses. But it is the disjunction of 
sense rather than of syntax that confuses the bright child's memorv 



29 



9. — Counting Pennies. 

A. 4 Pennies. (Age IV.) 

Materials. 4 pennies placed, not in a row, 1 but haphazard, though 
without touching each other. 

Procedure. " Do you see these pennies ? Count them, and tell me how 
many there are." 

If the child at first answers at random, add : " Count tbem aloud," or 
"Count them with your finger." ["Point to (touch) each penny as you 
count it " Dr. Simon considers too specific. It might be of interest to see 
if the child who has failed with the bare command can do the test when 
shown how ; e.g., as Terman recommends : " Count like this : one, two — " 
touching the first two with the finger as each is counted. But do not use an 
answer thus elicited for strict comparisons.] 

Evaluation. Two attempts may apparently be allowed ; since, according 
to Binet, the first random answer, if wrong, does not count as a failure. 
Binet and Terman insist that the child shall point accurately, and not merely 
give the right number at the end. 

Note if the child can count verbally by giving the numbers mechanically 
in correct sequence, without being able to count practically, i.e., to apply 
the numbers correctly to successive objects. 

B. 13 Pennies. (Age VI.) Procedure, etc., as before. 

10. — Comparing Two Lines. 

Materials. Two parallel horizontal lines, 5 em. and 6 cm. (2 in. and 
2-J in.) respectively, previously drawn in ink on a card or paper, the longer 
3 cm. (about li in.) below the shorter, with its centre under that of the 
other. (See Figure 10, p. 87, Appendix II.) (Dr. Lewis suggests to me from his 
experience that for a genuine test two or three sticks evoke better replies.) 

Procedure. " Do you see these lines ? Which is the longer ? " [" Put 

your finger on the longest (biggest) one." — Terman.] 2 

Evaluation. No hesitation is allowed. 

[Some investigators allow the examiner to repeat the instruction. English 
children will often respond more readily to the injunction : " Put your 
finger on the long one." But Binet insists that the child shall not only per- 
ceive the difference, but also understand, without any further help, that the 
phrase " the longer " implies making a comparison. Miss Johnston, however, 
tells me Binet allowed her to use the positive form "long." Personally, 
I find it rare for a child to respond to the latter and not to the former. If 
there is the least likelihood that the child is guessing, turn the card round 
and repeat. All responses must apparently be correct. Terman requires 
three correct responses out of three, or five out of six.] 

(') Binet's direction is translated " side by side " doc. cit. p. 200) ; but Dr. Simon says definitely " not 
in a row." [I place the four coins at the four corners of a diamond, and the thirteen coins with five along each 
of the two axes of a diamond and three along each of the four sides, always disturbing a little the regularity 
both of my movements and of the rows, so as to suggest no definite method to the child.] 

( 2 ) Mr. Dumville suggests to me the following formulae for Tests 10, 11, 19 : " One of these lines (boxes, 
faces) is longer (heavier, prettier). Which is it ? (Find out which box it is.)" This avoids many difficulties, 
but appears to lighten the difficulty of the test. I find " tell me which ..." more provocative than " show 
me which . . .", or simply, " which . . ." ; but Dr. Simon expressly prefers the two last ; and rejects such 
a phrase as " the long one." 



30 

11. — Comparing Faces. 

Materials. Binet's six faces, shown two only at a time. (See Figure 11 
(a), (b), and (c), pp. 89-93, Appendix II.) 

Procedure. " Which is the prettier of these two faces ? ' "* [If " prettier " 
seems not to be understood, " prettiest," or " which do you like the best of 
these two ladies," or " which is the nice one," may evoke correct answers. 
But these last two should not be counted for purposes of strict comparison. 
Some " like " the ugly ones best, because they are funny.] 

If using Binet's original plates, which show all three pairs on one page, 
it is better to cover the lower while dealing with the first or second. 

Evaluation. All three comparisons must be correctly made on the first 
attempt. Repeat the questions once, if silence makes it necessary. 

[Not a few intelligent children, with some accuracy, tell the examiner 
that Binet's pictures are " all ugly." In such a case, ask " which is the 
least ugly ? " Winch's pictures show clearer differences, but make the test 
easier.] 

AGE V. 

12. — Performing a Triple Order. 

Materials. Key and book, appropriately placed. Arrange the room 
while the child is carrying out one of the drawing or writing tests, or better 
before the interview begins ; unless compelled, the examiner should not 
allow himself or the child to be distracted from the text. 

Procedure. " Do you see this key ? Go and put it on the table. Then 
shut the door. And after that, bring me the book that is on the chair near 
the door. Do you understand ? First, put the key on the table ; then shut 
the door ; then bring me the book." [Note repetition of instructions. Do 
not let the child commence until this is completed. Detain him by the 
arm rather than risk breaking your injunction to say, " Stop, I haven't 
finished yet." Point to the objects as you mention them.] 

Evaluation. All three commissions must be performed spontaneously 
without any further instructions or hint. [If the child hesitates for long, he 
may be urged by saying, " Well, and what now ? " " What have you for- 
gotten ? " But no success evoked by such prompting should be assigned to 
his credit. Accept variations in the order ; but note them as of possible 
diagnostic significance. Terman insists on the order being correct. Binet 
says " put the key on the chair." Hence, correct order would mean coming 
back to the chair. But I understand this additional complication was not 
intentional.] 

13. — Drawing a Square from Copy. 

Materials. A square, each side measuring about 3 to 4 cm. (1J inches), 
drawn beforehand in ink, preferably on a card. (See Figure 12, p. 95, 
Appendix II.) Plain paper. Pen and ink [deliberately advised by Binet, 
making the task more difficult. Most American adapters and most English 
teachers prefer pencil]. 

Procedure. "I want you to copy this for me" (pointing to square). 
" Draw it here " (handing pen and paper). [If encouragement is needed : 
" What do you think this shape (picture) is ? See if you can make one 
like it." Do not use the word "square" yourself. Allow left-handed 
children to use the left hand, if they prefer ; but note the fact.] 

t 1 ) See footnote to preceding test. 



31 



Figure 1 



Test 13. Copying a Square. 

Evaluation of Results. Binet's Examples of Satisfactory and 
Unsatisfactory Reproductions. 



Satisfactory. 





■*— — I 




Unsatisfactory. 






32 

Evaluation. (See Figure 1.) The drawing passes if it can be recognised 
as an attempt at a square. It should have the four sides fairly distinct, the 
four angles roughly right angles, and should be more like a square than a 
decided oblong, i.e., an oblong equivalent in shape to two juxtaposed squares. 
If one side is twice the other, if the lines cross considerably at the corners 
or bend round without any angles, then the drawing fails. The size (usually 
reduced) does not matter. Permit only one attempt. [The test should take 
about one minute (Bobertag). Goddard apparently allows the child as many 
attempts as he wishes. I should only allow a second attempt if the child 
started afresh spontaneously before completing the first.] 

[Terman requires three attempts with pencil, and one out of three 
correct : and thus can note improvement or fatigue of at€ention, and auto- 
criticism as shown by the child's own selection of a best attempt.] 

Note how far the defects of the attempt are due to difficulties with the 
instrument (nib, penholder, ink, etc.) rather than with the figure to be 
drawn. 

Note the child's power of self-criticism (" Have you copied it correctly ? " 
"What is wrong ? "). Excessive satisfaction with an unsuccessful repro- 
duction is significant. 

Observe whether the child looks at the copy only before he commences, or 
also after he has finished to compare it with his product, or repeatedly during 
the process of drawing. Observe also if he turns the paper round for each 
successive line. 

In a detailed investigation, mark on the child's copy, by the method 
shown in Figure 2 : (i) the order, (ii) the direction of the lines, as they are 
drawn. According to age, teaching, and manual ability, children vary greatly 
in their procedure. The following features appear to characterise the better 
drawings and to indicate higher manual skill : (i) starting from the top 
left-hand corner rather than from any other corner (the latter, however, is 
rare) (Figure 2, a, b, and c) ; (ii) drawing both horizontals from left to 
right and both verticals from above downwards (Figure 2, a and b) ; and, as a 
consequence, (hi) commencing three or four lines discontinuously (i.e., starting 
from a point other than where the last line left off) (Figure 2, b) rather than 
continuously with the last (Figure 2, c and d) ; (iv) drawing all four lines 
continuously (Figure 2, c and d) rather than drawing the first pair con- 
tinuously and then starting a second continuous pair discontinuously with 
the first pair (Figure 2, a) ; (v) in continuous drawing, drawing in clockwise 
direction (starting with top horizontal) (Figure 2, c) rather than counter- 
clockwise (starting with left-hand vertical) (Figure 2, d) ; (vi) where all lines or 
pairs of lines are drawn discontinuously, starting with the (left-hand) vertical 
(Figure 2, b) rather than with the (top) horizontal (Figure 2, a) (the former, 
however, appears late and may be due to teaching) ; in (v) and (vi) the 
differences are perhaps significant only in younger children : in either case 
the later method — though still characteristic of backward individuals is 
commoner than the former among older children. Very rarely does a 
child start by drawing two opposite and parallel lines. 



14. — Repeating Syllables. 

(10 syllables) " His name is Jack ; he's such a naughty dog." (For 
Procedure and Evaluation, see p. 28, Test 7, No. v.) 



33 



Figure 2. 

Test 13. Copying a Square. 

Order and Direction in which the Lines are Drawn. 



(a) 

I 



(b) 
2 




(c) 



(d) 
4 



34 



15. — Giving Age. 
Procedure. " How old are you ? " 

Evaluation. Child should give his age last birthday in years. [However 
certain the child appears, always, if possible, verify the response.] 

Note : children very often say " seven " when they mean " getting on 
for seven." Hence, if the first answer seems wrong, ask specifically : "How 
old were you last birthday ? " Parents occasionally give an infant entering 
school and a child about to leave school an age above the true one ; and 
dull children (except when about to leave) an age below the real one. The 
child's answer should be accepted if it corresponds with what it has com- 
monly or recently been told. In such cases do not insist too rigidly that 
the child shall give an age identical with the age given by the birth certificate 
or register. [Note extenuating circumstances — e.g., life in orphanage or 
neglected home where the child may have never heard his age, or celebrated 
his birthday.] 

16. — Distinguishing Morning and Afternoon. 

Procedure. "Is it morning or afternoon now ? " (in the morning) ; or, 
" Is it afternoon or morning now ? " (in the afternoon). 

Evaluation. Repeat the question, if there is any possibility of the child 
having merely echoed one of the words thoughtlessly. [The questions r 
"Have you had your dinner yet ? " " What will it be after tea ? " . . . "just 
after you have had breakfast to-morrow morning ? " elicit answers of in- 
terest for comparison with the above.] 



17. — Naming Four Primary Colours. 

Materials. Four oblong pieces of paper, 2x6 cm. (|- X 1-f- in.), coloured 
bright ("saturated") red, yellow, blue, and green, and gummed beneath 
one another on a card. (See Figure 13, p. 97, Appendix II.) 

Procedure. " What colour is this ? " pointing to each in turn. 

Evaluation. No error and no second attempts are allowed. The test 
should take about 6 sees. But the time-limit does not appear to be strictly 
enforced. (" Scarlet " or " pink " is accepted for the red. If colour-blindness 
is suspected, test the child by requiring it to match shades of wool.) 

The order of difficulty appears to be : (i) Red, (ii) Green, (iii) Blue,, 
(iv) Yellow (undoubtedly hardest). 



18. — Repeating Numbers. 

Procedure. " Listen, and say these numbers after me." 

(For use only after failure in first set.) 
"3681 " ] "5749" "8526" 

Evaluation. One correct repetition out of three trials counts as success. 
(See p. 25, Test 2.) 

[The repetition of four numbers is included by Binet in neither the 1908 
nor the 1911 scale. Most investigators have used it for practice ; and it is 
embodied in the versions of Yerkes and Terman.] 



35 



19. — Comparing Two Weights. 

Materials. Four small similar boxes (about 1-5 X 2-5 X 3-5 cm.) 
(| x 1 X If inches) weighing 3, 12, 6, and 15 grams. 

Procedure. " You see these boxes " (showing first the pair weighing 
3 and 12 grams placed 5 or 6 cm. apart). " Which is the heavier ? " [or 
" heaviest "j. 1 

If the child merely points, add without any gesture : " Take them in 
your hands and weigh them." [A shy child may be encouraged by first 
asking : " How can you find out ? " English children respond better to 
the instruction " Lift them " or " Feel them, and give me the heavy one." 
But do not use this modification if strict comparability is required. Kuhlman 
and the Stanford Revision allow a demonstration : Binet and Yerkes, for 
the test proper, prohibit it. In any case, do not put them in his hands. If 
he merely lifts one, or both together, do not correct him. If the child fails 
completely to understand, it is then interesting to put them successively 
into his hand, and ask " Which is the heavier ? " But his response in this 
case does not count. If there is any suspicion that the first success may 
have been due to chance, repeat the experiment with another pair (6 and 15 
grams) ; and then with the first pair again. It would probably be advisable 
to make three trials in every case, although Binet does not enjoin this.] 

Evaluation. All three trials (except the first random guess) must 
apparently be correct ; if in any doubt, continue the repetitions. [Terman 
accepts two out of three.] 

Note if the child fails to weigh them in his hand, until so instructed, or 
if he merely arranges them in a pile or a row. 

Note the child's procedure : mere inspection, shaking, listening, simul- 
taneous lifting, successive lifting, same hand, different hands, use of fingers, 
palm, back of hand, single movement, repeated movement up and down, 
repeated trials, etc. The child's spontaneous procedure is so distinctive that 
the help suggested above should not be given too readily. 



AGE VI. 
20. — Giving Number of Fingers. 

Procedure. " How many fingers have you on your right hand ? " . . . 
" And how many on your left hand ?"..." How many does that make 
On both hands together ? " If the child attempts to count, prevent him, 
saying : " No, don't count." 

Evaluation. The replies must be made without stopping to count ; and 
all three questions 2 must be correctly answered. " Four . . . Four . . . 
Eight " — apparently exclusive of thumbs — may be accepted. 

Note automatisms, or sequence of numbers, e.g., " Five . . . Five . . . 
Five," or " Five . . . Five . . . Six." 

21. — Counting Thirteen Pennies. 

Materials. 13 pennies placed haphazard. [See footnote (*) p. 29.] 
Procedure and Evaluation. (See Test 9 B., p. 29.) 

t 1 ) See footnote to Test 10. Binet's formula is : " Tell me which is . . ." (loc. cit., p. 196). Dr. Simon 
thinks " Give me . . ."is perhaps preferable." 

( 2 ) So Binet states quite explicitly. Dr. Simon, however, says : " Cette decomposition simpiifie l'epreuve. 
II faut demander doublee : (How many fingers have you on both your hands together ? )." 



36 

22. — Drawing Diamond from Copy. 

Materials. A diamond or rhombus, about 7 cm. (2f inches) high, and 
4 cm. (If inches) across, with sides 4 cm. long, drawn as before on a card. 
(See Figure 14, p. 99, Appendix II.) Paper, pen, and ink. 

Procedure. [" Now I want you to 1 ] copy this for me " (pointing to 
diamond). " Draw it here " (handing pen and paper). 

Evaluation. (See Figure 3 for Binet's samples.) The drawing passes 
if it can be recognised as a diamond. Binet requires at least one pair of 
opposite angles to be fairly equal, at least one pair of adjacent sides to be 
fairly equal, and the vertical diameter to be longer. Absolute parallelism 
of the opposite sides is not insisted upon. The pass-standard is thus con- 
siderably below what an uninstructed teacher would be apt to accept as a 
satisfactory reproduction. 

Points analogous to those specified above (p. 32) as worthy of notice 
in the case of the square may be noted in the case of the diamond. The 
following features are common in the successful drawings, but their diagnostic 
significance is small, as they are frequently found also in the unsuccessful 
drawings : (i) Drawing the upper left-hand line first, as Figure 4 (a) and (&) 
(other methods are rare) ; (ii) starting from the top corner rather than from 
left-hand corner as Figure 4 (6) ; (iii) drawing every line downward, as Figure 
4 (6) ; (iv) completely or incompletely discontinuous drawing, rather than 
completely continuous drawing (as Figure 4 (a) : comparatively rare) ; (v) in- 
completely continuous drawing, proceeding clockwise, as Figure 4' (a) 
(especially if starting from the left-hand corner) rather than counter-clock- 
wise ; (vi) drawing the side pairs continuously (the second pair commenced 
discontinuously), as Figure 4 (&), rather than the top two continuously and 
the bottom two continuously ; (vii) drawing all lines discontinuously rather 
than drawing only one pair continuously (when only one pair is so drawn, it 
is usually the right-hand pair, drawn last) ; (viii) of those that are drawn 
upward, the top-left is the commonest, as Figure 4 (a) ; the bottom right the 
next commonest ; such movements are facilitated by twisting the paper a 
little clockwise. As a rule, one of the other lines is drawn upwards only 
when it is the last line in continuous drawing. 

23- — Transcription. 

Materials. " See little Paul " written, with the two capitals as indi- 
cated, in a bold, copy-book handwriting on a card or sheet of paper. (See 
Figure 15, p. 101, Appendix II.) Paper, pen and ink. 

Procedure. " Will you copy that for me ? " [Allow left-handed children 
to use the left hand, if they prefer ; but note the fact.] 

Evaluation. The test is passed, if the copy is sufficiently legible to be 
read by a person who did not know what was to be written. 

Teachers should note that, despite appearances, it is a test neither of 
calligraphy nor of orthography. 

24. — Naming Days of the Week. 

Procedure. " [Can you tell me] what are the days of the week ? " 

Evaluation. The days must be named in order, without error or hesita- 
tion, in 10 sees. Some children, beginning at " Monday," fail at first by 

( x ) It is usually convenient to ask for the copy of the diamond immediately after the square has been 
drawn ; and some such little circumlocution makes the transition from test to test a little less austere. Dr. 
Simon, however, writes : " Draw this here, please — ne suffit-il pas ? " And many teachers, as noted above, 
prefer throughout the brief curt command. 



• 



37 



Figure 3. 

Test 22. Copying a Diamond. 

Binet's Examples of Satisfactory and Unsatisfactory Reproductions. 



Satisfactory. 






A 



Unsatisfactory, 





38 



Figure 4. 

Test 22. Copying a Diamond. 

Order and Direction in which the Lines are Drawn. x 



(a). Scheme to illustrate the 
commonest type and method 
among the younger or duller 
children. 



(6). Commonest method among 
the older or brighter children. 





(*) My results differ somewhat from those of Mr. Winch's (Child Study, VII. No, 6, p. 103. where also 
Figs. 1 and 2 are, apparently by a printer's error, identical). But Mr. Winch's copy appears to have been a 
square, not, as Binet's, a rhombus. In figure (a) above it will be noted that the method tends to result 
in a rough square, and, since the vertical diameter is not longer than the horizontal, fails. 



39 

forgetting " Sunday " at the end ; [allow correction, if 10 sees, has not expired]. 
Backward children often succeed eventually with encouragement, but not 
within the time-limit. Such successes should not count as satisfactory. 

The order for ease of remembrance, judged by average infrequency of 
omission, appears to be approximately : (i) Monday, (ii) Tuesday, (iii) 
Saturday, (iv) Wednesday, (v) Sunday, (vi) Friday, (vii) Thursday (by far 
the most frequently omitted). 

[Terman asks also " What day comes before . . . Tuesday ? " etc., and 
requires two such questions to be correctly answered. A common and yet 
more useful type of question is : " What is the day after to-morrow ? " 
" What was the day before yesterday ? " But application is always harder 
than mechanical repetition.] 

Note especially what may be termed circular automatism (recom- 
mencing, when the series has been completely enumerated). 



25. — Naming the Four Commonest Coins. 

Materials. Four common coins, |d., 6d., Id., Is., 1 placed heads upper- 
most in this order in a row upon the table. The coins should be but little 
worn ; the copper pieces should not be new. [It will generally be convenient 
to combine Test 43 with the present test by using all the nine commoner 
coins.] 

Procedure. Ask " What is this ? " pointing to each of the coins in 
succession. Neither examiner nor child should handle them or turn them 
over. (If the child replies " money," ask : " Yes ; but what do we call this 
particular piece ? ") 

Evaluation. All four should be named correctly to pass Test 25. No 
error whatever is allowed. 

[Terman requires only three out of four to be correctly named.] 

Note any special circumstance (a) facilitating or (b) impeding a satis- 
factory performance in this and other money tests, e.g., (a) selling papers, (6) 
institution life. 

26. — Reconstructing Divided Oblong Card. 

Materials. Two cards the size of a lady's visiting card (about 6 cm. x 
9 cm., or 2J x 3J inches), one intact, the other divided along one diagonal 
into two equal triangles. Place the triangles so that the longest sides (hypo- 
tenuses) are at right angles, 2 but do not face towards each other. 3 (See 
Figure 5.) 

[Before cutting the card, black one side. This does not appear to alter 
the difficulty of the test ; but prevents turning over. 4 ] 

Procedure. " One of my cards has been cut in two ; can you put the 
pieces together again to make a whole one like this ? " (pointing to the 
intact one). 

( 1 ) The highest of the coins mentioned by Binet is the 5-franc piece, not the 1 franc ; but with English 
children the 5-shilling piece would hardly be included among " les i pieces de monnaie usuelles." Dr. Simon 
would agree with the substitution of the shilling, if experience showed that it kept the test nearer to the 
original age-assignment, as, of course, it does. 

( 2 ) Binet and Simon (tr. Town), Method of Measuring Development of Intelligence, p. 25 (1911 scale). 

( 3 ) Binet and Simon (tr. Kite), Development of Intelligence, p. 199 (1908 scale). The latter instruction 
rules out Melville's position ; the former rules out Terman's (which is easier) and Saffiotti's and Winch's 
(first) position (both of which are harder and necessitate turning over). 

( 4 ) In Dr. Simon's procedure I understand that there is an actual difference of tint on the two sides, one 
being a deeper grey. 



40 

If the child merely looks at the cards without touching them, say : 
" Move them about and see if you can fit them together " ; and, if necessary, 
place one in his hand. 

See that the child does not turn one triangle over. If the child makes 
a wrong combination and appeals for judgment, give no opinion. Remain 
silent ; or say merely, " What do you think ? " [Drummond and Melville 
allow the irregular shape obtained by putting diagonals together, with one 
card turned over. This is surely, in Dr. Simon's phrase, trops indulgents.] 

Evaluation. [Allow J min., Bobertag.] A child sometimes sits contem- 
plating a wrong combination ; and it is difficult to know whether this repre- 
sents his final attempt. In this case do not judge it too hastily, but ask : 
"Is that right ? '^ 

[Terman requires two successes out of three trials — somewhat conven- 
tionally defined.] Note the child's procedure, which is usually far more 
significant than the mere fact of failure or success, e.g., a single combination 
alone attempted, the same combination repeated, systematic investigation 
of many combinations, uncritical acceptance of impossible combinations, 
superposition or juxtaposition of intact card. 

27. — Defining Concrete Terms. 

Procedure. "What is . . ." 

(i) ..." a horse ? " 
(ii) ... "a chair ? " 
(hi) ... "a mother ? " [Mclntyre and Rogers, " school " ; Bobertag 

" soldier "]. 
(iv) ... "a table ? " [Bobertag, " doll " ; Yerkes, " baby "]. 

(v) . . . "a fork?" [Yerkes, "spoon"]. 

[For age V. Terman substitutes "doll" for "mother" and adds (vi) 
" pencil " ; and for age VIII. uses (i) balloon, (ii) tiger, (iii) football, (iv) 
soldier, or, if any is unfamiliar, automobile, battleship, potato, store. A 
word used with success by many school medical officers in England is 
" kitten " or " cat."] 

Binet's order is (i) fork, (ii) table, (iii) chair, (iv) horse, (v) mother. 
But " fork " is a most difficult word to begin with ; and it is better to place 
" chair " before " table," else the child may think first of the multiplication 
table. 2 [If a child uses "thing" or "something " for "horse" or "chair," 
then, " mother," or perhaps " horse " (if not already given), should follow, 
otherwise even a bright child having given "thing" for "chair," "table," 
and "fork" without correction, is apt from sheer inertia to offer "thing " as 
the genus of " horse."] The best order, therefore, appears to be as above. 
But even so, a bright boy may reply for both "chair " and "horse " with 
the automatism " it has got legs." If so, proceed at once to " fork ". 

The instructions may be repeated ; but use no other form of words. 
[A child is often at first silent in this test. Urge him by saying : " You 
have seen a horse, haven't you ? " " You know what a chair is ? " (Beware 
of saying " What is a chair like ? " or " for ? " " What does a horse do ? ") 
Give the child a minute to reply. — Melville.] 

(') Or better, says Dr. Simon : " ' <pa y est ? ' avec le sens de : ' avez-vous fini ? ' " But " Have you 
finished ? " or its equivalents in English often provokes a hesitant child to say " Yes " impulsively, just as 
perhaps " Is that right ? " conveys the opposite suggestion. 

( 2 ) Dr. Simon agrees : " L'ordre que nous indiquions n'avait rien d'imperatif. L'ordre propose 1 est en 
effet meilleur." 



41 



Figure 5. 



Test 26. Divided Card. 



Position of Intact and Divided Cards as shown to the child. x 





(*) This arrangement appears to be that adopted by Dr. Simon. But before one of our number attended 
his classes, we interpreted Binet's description to mean (as Mr. Winch also interpreted it) that "the two 
hypotenuses (the edges to be joined) should be far away from each other as possible" (Child Study, Vol. VII, 
No. 3, p. 42), though still remaining (contrary to Mr. Winch's interpretation) at right angles. This resulted 
in an arrangement which would be given by interchanging the top or bottom triangles as above shown. The 
inclusion of these earlier results may possibly have made the test appear a little harder than it should, 
although I can find no clear evidence of this. 



42 

Evaluation of Replies. The character of three replies Out of five deter- 
mines the value of the test. 

The following are the commoner types of definition. Note " U " or 
" C," according as child defines (A) in terms of Use, or (B) in terms superior 
to Use, e.g., in terms of Class. 

A. Use includes either (1) Action, i.e., Functional Use ; or (2) Purpose, 
i.e., Use for Us, and denotes a mental level of age VI., e.g. : — 

(a) " it runs, draws a cart " ( = A. 1) ; " it is to pull our things 

along " ( = A. 2). 

(b) " she minds the babies." 

(c) "something to have your dinner on"; "where the plates are 

put"; "something you eat with" (relative pronoun 
omitted). 

(d) " what you eat with " ; " you have it for a meal." 

The order of difficulty for Use (treating terms superior to use as 
including knowledge of Use) is : (i) chair, (ii) table, (hi) horse, (iv) mother, 
(v) fork. 

B. Terms superior to Use include either (1) Class or Genus (with or with- 
out " Differentia "), or (2) Description (including colour, shape, size, structure, 
substance, etc.) ; and are taken to denote a mental level of age X., e.g. : — 

(a) " an animal." 

(6) "a thing to sit on" ; "something that you pick up your food 

with." ("Thing" and "something," however, are not 

accepted for "horse" or "mother.") 

(c) "a lady " ("a woman " is less common among poor children ; 

" a parent " at this age rarer still). 

(d) " one who cooks our dinners." 

(e) " got four legs " ; " it's silver." 

(/) "a piece of wood " ; " part of the furniture." 

(g) " an instrument to eat with " ; " an article to sit on." 

The order of difficulty for Class (or other terms superior to use) is : (i) 
horse, (ii) table, (iii) mother, (iv) chair, (v) fork. 

The variations in the age-assignments of definition superior to use 
depend largely on the inclusion of such replies as B (&), (d), (e), and (/), 
under A rather than under B. 

It will be seen that the distinction between A (c) and B (6) is somewhat 
arbitrary ; but it seems to correspond with the spirit of Binet's examples, 
and with a genuine difference in mental level. 1 Safnotti appears to exclude 
description from definition "superior to use"; and many older defectives 
below the level of age X. are prone to describe. 

Yerkes omits " mother " ; and gives 1 point for definition by use and 
2 for definition superior to use. 

[Many classifications of children's definitions have been attempted. For 
example, Mclntyre and Rogers discriminate the following types : (1) Purely, 
Functional ; (2) Prelogical Classification, with Function ; (3) Pure Descrip- 
tion ; (4) Prelogical Classification, with Description ; (5) (Pure) Classification, 
Logical, but with no Specification ; (6) Logical Definition (Logical Class, 
specified by adding Description and Functions). No simple division pre- 
cisely corresponds with a difference of intellect. Logical relevance and com- 
plexity are perhaps most significant.] 

( x ) Dr. Simon also accepts it. 



43 

Emotional attitudes are often conspicuous in this test — older children 
are sometimes amused, sometimes confused, by being asked so simple a 
question as " What is a chair ? " ; while " What is a mother ? " often arouses 
emotional embarrassment. 

28. — Repeating Numbers. 

Procedure. " Listen, and say these numbers after me." 

(For use only after failure in first set.) 
"5 2 94 7" | "63852" "97318" 

Evaluation. One correct repetition out of three trials counts as success. 
(See p. 25, Test 2.) 

29. — Describing Pictures : Mere Description (D.) 
Procedure. (See p. 27, Test 6 B.) 

Evaluation. The child should use phrases indicating actions and 
characteristics. E.g., 

(i) " They're pulling a cart." 

(ii) " A man and a woman sitting on a seat." " An old man asleep." 
(iii) " A man standing on a bed and trying to look out of the window." 
" A man looking at himself in the glass." 

30.— Repeating Syllables. 

{16 syllables) " We are going for a walk ; will you give me that pretty 
bonnet ? " 

Procedure and Evaluation. (See p. 28, Tesb 7, viii.) 

31. — Distinguishing Right and Left. 

Procedure. (1) " Show me your right hand "... (2) " Show me your 
left ear." 

Evaluation. The child must perform both correctly without any kind 
of help. Hesitation and self -correction (without any hint) are allowed ; if 
by a slip the child shows his left hand or right ear, the experimenter waits 
a moment for a spontaneous correction, which is allowed to pass, but his 
manner of waiting should not suggest that the first action was wrong. If 
the correction is itself incorrect, the child fails. 

[Terman adds : (3) " Show me your right eye " ; and requires three 
correct answers out of three, or five out of six. Dr. Lewis suggests left leg.] 

Note uncertainty or confusion, as distinct from ignorance ; and any 
cue or clue (hand used for writing, hand marked by scar, etc.). If the child 
fails in right and left, can it distinguish up and down, a distinction that is 
usually far easier ? 

Note left-handed children, who sometimes are confused by hearing 
other children told that their right hand is the one they write with. 

AGE VII. 

32. — Recognising Missing Features. 

Materials. Binet's four pictures of faces without mouth, nose, eye, 
and of a body without arms. See Figure 16, (a), (&), (c), and (d), pp. 103-9, 
Appendix II. (in the view of Bobertag and others the eyebrow should be 
erased in the third picture). [Saffiotti adds a table with one of the distant 
legs omitted.] 



44 

Procedure. 1 "Look at this [man's] face. [Can you] tell me what has 
been left out ? " And, for the others : " What has been left out here ? " 

[or "in this drawing?"]. [The American translation — "lacking" or 
" missing " — is often unintelligible to English children. Begin with the face 
without the mouth ; proceed with eye, nose, leaving arms until last.] 

If the child says " her body," the examiner may reply : " No, in the 
face " (emphasising the last word) ; [or, " Oh, I was only trying to draw her 
face. What must I put in to finish the drawing of her face ?"..." What 
have I forgotten in drawing her face ? " or pass to the figure without arms, 
and then return to the faces. Similarly, an additional attempt is suggested 
if the child (with some accuracy) observes : " She's got no teeth," " He's 
bald."] Otherwise no Second attempts should be allowed with the same 
picture. 

[Terman begins : " There is something wrong with this face. It is not 
all there," etc. ; and allows help with the first picture — " See, the eye is 
gone " — if necessary. Melville repeats " What else ? " until the child finds 
the correct reply, giving him five chances in all. 

Answers thus obtained, however, should not be counted for strict com- 
parability. Dr. Simon expressly states that, having already drawn attention 
to the part intended to be depicted by the word " face," which may be 
repeated and emphasised, the examiner should receive the reiterated reply 
" body and arms " as a failure. 2 ] 

Evaluation. Three correct answers with the four pictures are required. 
[For the last picture " hand(s) " or " finger (s) " may be taken as correct 
(Melville). The whole should be done in 20 to 25 sees. (Bobertag).] 

The average order of difficulty is : (i) arms, (ii) mouth, (iii) eye, (iv) nose. 
But to commence with missing arms would suggest body and arms for the 
rest. 

Note references to what a profile drawing cannot show : " her other 
ear," etc. 

33— Adding Three Pennies and Three Halfpennies. 

Materials. Three pennies and three halfpennies, set out separately, but 
not in a row, nor all the pennies entirely apart from all the halfpennies. 
[Since an entirely haphazard order, such as Binet and Simon imply, may 
occasionally favour some children e.g., when two halfpennies fall side by 
side, I arrange the coins alternately and place them at the six corners of an 
imaginary hexagon.] 

[As they have neither half -cent nor two-cent pieces, American investi- 
gators, copying Goddard, are forced to use stamps. Some examiners, even 
in this country, follow them. But, to English children, as to French, the 
stamp is far less familiar than the corresponding coin.] 

Procedure. " Count this money for me ; and tell me how much there 
is altogether." 

[Winch asks : " Suppose we had all halfpennies, how many would there 
be ? " This elicits the same number as the French ; but is undoubtedly 
harder ; and, therefore, seems less strictly analogous. To use shillings and 

(*) The wording in instruction for this test has proved unusually difficult to standardise. Dr. Simon's 
comments on the present form are " ' Man's (face) ' et ' can you tell ' semblent inutile ? ' Left out ' parait 
trop precise ; toute fois e'est peu de chose ' ; et ' I was only trying . . .' semble excessif." Simply to repeat 
". . . in this face " is his suggestion. 

( 2 ) I fear, however, that I have on this last point been a little less rigid than Dr. Simon would have 
wished; Hence, the present grading of the test may perhaps represent it as a little easier; than it actually 
should be. 



45 

florins would serve the same end better, if the child knew the florin was 
equivalent to two shillings.] 

Evaluation. No error and no repetition of the instructions is allowed. 
[Melville allows telling the child to " point to each and say how much it is 
altogether." This, however, usually evokes the answer " six."] The test 
should be done in 8 to 10 sees. Binet adds : " It is useless to wait 
15 seconds." 

Note the child's method of " counting " (ask, if necessary, " How do 
you get that answer ? ") Does he, for example, begin with pennies or half- 
pennies, counting by pennies or by halfpennies either adding by twos for 
the pennies, or merely counting twice to each one, or simply counting the 
six coins ? 

Note outdoor activities bearing on this test (selling papers, " running 
errands," etc.). 

34. — Stating Differences between Concrete Objects. 

Procedure. " You know what a butterfly is, don't you ? . . . And you 
know what a fly is ? . . . They are not the same, are they ? ... In what 
way are they not the same?" ["What is the difference between a fly and 
a butterfly ? " If the child hesitates, add : " They are different, are they 
not ? Well, do you think you can tell me what the difference is ? "] x 

Most investigators translate Binet's word ("pareil") quite literally 
("alike "). The awkwardness of such a phrase, however, seems to puzzle 
some children ; I have not found any child troubled by the use of " same " 
for " similar." To ask : " How can you tell ' glass ' from ' wood ' ? " will 
sometimes precipitate a reply, but the answer should not count, if otherwise 
unobtainable. (Even if the child says he does not know the objects, ask 
for the differences nevertheless. Encouragement is particularly necessary 
in this test.) 

The following words are suggested by Binet ; and the differences between 
them should be demanded in order : — 

(i) fly, butterfly ; 
(ii) wood, glass ; 
(iii) paper, cardboard. 

[So much depends upon the child's familiarity with the particular objects 
that, for a genuine test, more objects are desirable : e.g., horse, donkey ; 
tram, bus ; apple, orange, etc. Winch uses : (i) milk, water ; (ii) wood, iron ; 
(iii) cow, sheep. Terman uses for (iii) stone, egg. Yerkes uses apple, 
banana for (i) ; and paper, cloth for (iii).] 

Evaluation. Two Out o£ three statements must be correct. Any true 
difference, though trivial, will pass. But if the child repeats the same differ- 
ence, e.g., " it is larger," it is insufficient. [Note the stereotypy, and ask : 
" In what other way are they not the same ? "] Often a child takes a 
minute for one reply ; but if he takes longer than two minutes for all he 
fails. [Allow 20 sees, each (Goddard, Whipple). But this is plainly too 
brief to be comparable with Binet's recommendations.] However, as 
Dr. Simon observes, in this test le temps est peu important. 

[Yerkes allots two points for each reply.] 

The order of difficulty is as above, except where children are unfamiliar 
with butterflies. 

( J ) Dr. Simon expressly does not authorise these suggestions. 



46 

35. — Writing from Dictation. 

Materials. Pen, ink, paper. 

Procedure. " Will you write this down for me on this piece of paper ? 
' The pretty little girls.' " 

[Apparently the phrase is to be uttered as a whole, and not dictated 
word by word ; but it may be repeated.] 

Evaluation. The words must be separate and sufficiently legible (and 
presumably the spelling sufficiently accurate) for the words to be read by 
a person who did not know what had been dictated. 

AGE VIII. 
36. — Reading and Reproduction. 

Materials. A translation of Binet's passage, printed or typed in three 
paragraphs, with English place-names and money values substituted for the 
French. (See Figure 17, p. Ill, Appendix II.) My translation is somewhat 
easier than the American versions. These often translate French words of 
Latin origin by English words from the same roots. The latter are far less 
familiar to English children than the former are to French. 1 Even with 
this simplification some of the words are unusually difficult for children of 
the age for which it was intended. 

Procedure, " [Will you] read this for me [please] ? " Two seconds 
after the reading is finished, remove the passage, and say : " Tell me what 
you have been reading about." 

[Many investigators read the passage to the child, if he eannot read it 
fairly well himself. Binet, however, says : " If the child cannot read the 
more difficult words 2 of the test . . . interrupt the exercise and consider 
the test not passed." 3 Rigidly interpreted, this seems to mean that a 
complete failure to read, even incorrectly, more than one word results in 
failure. Bub very few children, who succeed in reading the words with 
absolute correctness, fail in recalling more than two facts. Hence, a little 
leniency in the mechanical part of the reading seems advisable, particu- 
larly in the rendering of " 150,000," " 5th," and perhaps " September." 
Dr. Simon agrees : peu importe sa maniere de lire.] 

Binet deliberately sets no time-limit, as speed depends upon school 
practice. He gives in round figures, roughly corresponding with those 
found in my own experiments with the translated version, the following 
average times for reading the French (53 words) : — 

At 8 years . . . . 45 sees. 

At 9 years . . . . 40 sees. 

At 10 years . . . . 30 sees. 

At 11 years . . . . 25 sees. 

No child, he adds, can recall six items unless he can read the passage in 
one minute at most. 

Evaluation. Each correct phrase or word as indicated below consti- 
tutes one item. Record their number, and if possible the whole reproduction 
verbatim. If a child invents statements that have not been read, these 

I 1 ) The words used, says Dr. Simon, should be those current in ordinary speech. 

( 2 ) Development of Intelligence (Miss Kite's translation), p. 212. Binet's words are " les mots assez 
difficiles." 

( a ) Dr. Simon seems a little less severe. If the difficulty of the words makes the child forget the thread 
of the ideas, iant pis -pour lui. But apparently if he can still reproduce the required number of items correctly, 
he passes. He is, however, not to be assisted in the reading. 



47 

should be noted in the detailed record. Inaccuracy in the reading itself does 
not count against the child. 

A. Recalls two items. (Age VIII.) 

B. Recalls six items. (Age IX.) 

The following arrangement of the passage indicates which words or 
phrases count in the marking as unitary items. The total number of items 
is twenty. 1 Words or phrases in parenthesis are, more or less, repetitions 
of preceding portions ; and are, therefore, not to be counted again. 

THREE | HOUSES | ON FIRE. | 

London, | September | 5th. | 

A big | (fire) last night | burnt down or destroyed (three 
houses) | in the middle of the city. | 

Seventeen families | now have no homes. | (The loss is more 
than) 150,000 pounds. | 

A young barber | , who saved | a baby | in its cradle | , was 
badly | hurt | about the hands. | 

37. — Answering Easy Questions. 

Procedure. " Tell me this " : 

(i) " [Suppose you have to go somewhere by train] : what must you do 
if you miss the train ? " . . . 

(ii) " What ought you to do, if you broke something that belonged to 
somebody else ? " 

(iii) " If one of the other boys (girls) hit you by accident, without 
meaning to, what should you do then ? " . . . 

If no answer is given, repeat the question as usual, not sternly, but pleasantly 
prefixing : " Did you catch what I said ? " Do not vary the wording. 

I have adopted the above form ("suppose you . . .," "if you . . .") 
for the more usual and more literal version (" when you . . ."), because so 
many children do not in the latter case grasp that the examiner is putting 
an imaginary case ; the French (" quand on," not " quand tu ") implies 
this. The phrase "when one . . .," used by some translators, seems quite 
out of the question in addressing little children. 2 The preliminary clause 
adopted in the first question ("suppose . . .") makes the question fairer 
for those who by some accident have never been in a train ; and renders 
certain inadmissible replies, which otherwise would in actual life be correct 
{e.g., " take a taxi " or " tram "), rare among intelligent children, and their 
conventional rejection more legitimate. On the other hand, it slightly 
emphasises the personal note of the English " you " ; and, in making the 
question a trifle less general, makes it perhaps a trifle more easy. 

I have rearranged the questions in order of increasing difficulty. Such 
rearrangements are desirable, not only upon general principles, but also to 
economise time ; if the child fails utterly over the first, the busy examiner 
will not ask the remainder, since such a child is not likely to answer both of 
the harder questions. 

(') Binefc does not reckon the number of the month as a separate item, and accordingly obtains a 
maximum of only nineteen. 

( 2 ) "If ive " is a fairer rendering, and more natural in the first question. 



48 

Evaluation. Two out of three must be answered satisfactorily, 
(i) Satisfactory Answers. — [By convention, must always imply waiting 
for the next train.] E.g., " Wait for another." " Take the 
next." [" Take a taxi."] 
Unsatisfactory Answers. — " Run after it." " Try not to miss it." 
"Go home again." [Terman accepts the last for isolated locali- 
ties with but one or two trains a day.] 

(ii) Satisfactory Answers. — Imply either restitution, apology, or con- 
fession. [Terman rejects confession without apology. Binet, 
however, expressly accepts the reply " acknowledge it."] E.g., 
" Pay for it." " Own up." " Buy another." " Ask to be 
forgiven." " Say I was sorry." [" Tell mother " is acceptable 
only if the boy assumes the article belonged to his mother.] 
Unsatisfactory Answers. — " I should cry." " Mend it." " Hide it." 

(iii) Satisfactory Answers. — [Imply either ignoring or excusing the act.] 
E.g., " Do nothing." " Forgive him." " Tell him to be more 
careful." 
Unsatisfactory Answers. — " Tell teacher." " Hit him back." 
Binet gives a much fuller list of questions in his 1905 version ; and 
appends a more complex method of evaluation. (See 1905 scale, transl. Kite, 
p. 124, et seq.) 

The average order of ease is as above, the first being, according to my 
figures, more suitable for age VII. [For age VIII. Terman includes nos. (ii), 
(iii), and no. (i) from Test 50 ; and requires two out of three to be correctly 
answered. No. (i) from the present test he assigns to age VI. Yerkes omits 
(iii) and allots 2 points to each reply.] 

38. — Counting Backwards, 20 — 1. 
Procedure. " You can count, can't you — 1, 2, 3, and so on ? Now, do 
you think you could count backwards ? Start at 20 and go on until you 
reach 1." If the child does not understand, " Count like this : 20, 19, 18," 

proceed no further. 

[Dr. Simon asks the weaker children to count forward first. Yerkes 
suggests that the experimenter always count from 25 to 21, and then pause 
for the examinee to continue.] 

Evaluation. One uncorrected error (either of omission or inversion) is 
permitted. Binet allows only 20 sees., 1 proceeds in the instructions only 
to 19, and implies counting to 0. But Dr. Simon writes definitely that the 
omission of zero is not an error. [Yerkes allows 30 sees. ; Terman 40 sees. ; 
both, with Goddard, Bobertag, and others, accept counting to 1. He gives 
4 points if the child can count from 20, 3 from 15, 2 from 10, 1 from 5. 
Bobertag and Terman would not be "pedantic about the time-limit " in this 
test.] The child who thinks out the numbers by counting up from 1 each 
time fails. 

Note especially if a child, after perhaps counting backwards for two or 
three numbers, loses the " guiding idea," and starts counting forward. 

Note also if the child has been specifically taught this exercise in school. 

39— Giving Full Date. 

Procedure. " What is the date to-day ? " If the word " date " is not 
understood, ask in detail : " What day of the week is it to-day ? " " What 
month is it ? " " What number oi the month ? " "And what year ? " 

(*) In practice, apparently, half a minute or more was often allowed. 



49 

[These supplementary questions make the test somewhat easier ; but, 
though not expressly suggested by Binet, seem to have been adopted by 
most examiners in actual practice.] 

Evaluation. All four items must be correctly given ; but an error of 
three days either way is allowable for the day of the month (unless that 
involves an error in naming the month). [Presumably, if the child remembers 
mechanically that it is "the fourth month," but cannot explain that this 
month is April, he fails.] 

Note, for this test especially, any influence of school instruction ; also 
clues peculiar to specific dates {e.g., the child's own birthday, or some other 
anniversary). 

The average order of ease is : (i) day of week, (ii) month, (hi) year, 
(iv) day of month. 

[An applied problem, curiously difficult even for supernormals, is : 
" What is the year now ? . . . How old are you ? . . . Then, in what year 
were you born ? "] 

40. — Giving Change. 

Materials. All the commoner current coins (|d., |d., Id., 6d., 2s., 2s. 6d., 
10s. £1 and Is., and, in addition, the three pennies and three halfpennies. 
The five boxes used for the weights. 

The shilling is kept by the experimenter to pay for the box. The rest, 
with the boxes, is placed near the child. Apparently it should be impossible 
to give the correct change in pennies and halfpennies alone, i.e., in copper 
without silver, 1 although the money actually mentioned by Binet would 
allow it. 2 

Procedure. " Now, shall we play at shop for a change ? You shall be 
the shopkeeper. Here are some boxes for you to sell : and here is your cash. 
See how rich you are . Now will you sell me one of your boxes ? How 
much are they each ? Twopence, shall we say ? Well, here is the money. 
Can you give me the right change, please ? " (The experimenter holds out 
his hand for the money. Note, however, that he should not inform the child 
what coin he is offering him. The long explanation is Binet's. For rapid 
work it is perhaps unnecessary. But it makes a pleasant relief to a tedious 
series of short injunctions, such as may have been given for preceding tests.) 

Evaluation, The child must actually hand over the right amount 
(sixpence and fourpence in pennies or in pennies and halfpennies) ; merely 
stating it correctly as " tenpence " does not count. 

[Terman gives three verbal problems without coins (4 c. out of 10 c, 
12 c. out of 15 c, and 4 c. out of 25 c.) ; and requires two correct answers 
out of three.] 

Note the child's mental and practical procedure ; and out-of-school 
activities that may have helped him. 



<*) Cf. Bulletin (tr. Town), Method of Measuring Development, p. 39, and 1908 scale (tr. Kite), Develop- 
ment of Intelligence, p. 219. 

In Dr. Simon's procedure, if I am correctly informed, there is usually a sou missing, when the child trie3 
to make up the money in copper only. But a rigid uniformity does not seem to have been felt so necessary 
with the French coins. Among the translations of this test there are countless variations in materials and 
instructions. (See above, p. 6.) 

( 2 ) Cf. Town, loc. cit., p. 38. Kite, p. 218 : (the " sixty-five centimes " appears by oversight to include 
the fifteen in copper previously mentioned. " Further apart " seems a mistranslation for " de plus "). 

E 



50 

41. — Repeating Numbers. 
Procedure. " Listen, and say these numbers after me." 

(For use only after failure in first set.) 
"250364" | "853916" "471582" 
Evaluation. One correct repetition out of three trials counts as success. 
(See p. 25, Test 2.) 

[The repetition of six numbers was included by Binet in neither the 
1908 nor 1911 scale. Most investigators have used it for practice ; and it 
is definitely embodied in the versions of Goddard, Yerkes, and Terman.] 

AGE IX. 

42.— Naming Months. 

Procedure. "[Can you] tell me all the months of the year?" [If the 

child is silent, Terman and Melville do not allow examiner to start him by 
saying, " January " ; and Dr. Simon is disposed to agree with them.] 

Evaluation. Binet allows 15 sees, and one error. [Terman requires, 
in addition, two out of three " check-questions," or applied problems, to be 
answered correctly, e.g., " What month comes before April ?"..." before 
July ? " etc.] 

Average order of ease is : January, February, December, March, 
November, April, July, May, September, June, October, August — the last 
five being those most often omitted. 

43. — Naming Nine Common Coins. 

Materials. Nine coins, all placed in a row on the table with the heads 
upwards : similar coins should not be adjacent, and the commoner coins 
of any one metal should not be named first. 

[Order upon table : -Jd., 2s., 10s., 6d., Jd., 2s. 6d., Id., Is., £1.] 

While current One Pound and Ten Shilling notes must be allowed. 

Procedure. Ask : " What is this ? " pointing to each in succession. 
Neither examiner nor child should handle them or turn them over. 

Evaluation. All nine should be named correctly in 40 sees. If an 
error is attributable to passing confusion, Binet allows a second trial of the 
whole series after a few minutes. [An interesting variant is to ask the child 
to pick out certain coins by name. In cases of confusion, Melville asks 
certain catch- questions : " Have you ever seen a 1-dollar bill ? " (or other 
notes or coins which do not exist) ] 

Average order of ease is : Id., Jd., |d., Is., 6d., £1, 10s., 2s. 6d., 2s., 3d., 
5s., 4s.). [The busy examiner will observe that failure or success depends 
chiefly upon the florin, and occasionally, if this is not confused with the half- 
crown, upon the half-sovereign. It is unwise, however, to put the florin the 
first of all.] 

44. — Reading and Reproduction. 

Recalls Six Items. 
Procedure and Evaluation. (See p. 46, Test 36 B.) 

45. — Defining Concrete Terms by Class or Description. 

Procedure and Evaluation. (See p. 40-3, Test 27, B.) 
The child's replies should be entered in full for subsequent reference 
in the detailed record. 



51 

AGE X. 

46. — Arranging Five Weights in Order. 

Materials. 5 boxes, identical in colour, shape, and size (about 1 • 5 X 
2-5 X 3-5 cm., or f x 1-| X 1 inches), and loaded with shot and cotton- 
wool or candle wax to weigh, without rattling, 3, 6, 9, 12, and 15 grams 
(approximately one, two, three, four, and five-tenths of an ounce, or, more 
exactly, 46, 93, 139, 185, and 231 grains). To assist checking the correctness 
of the arrangement, key letters, e.g., B, I, N, E, T, rather than numbers or 
the true weights, may be written in order on the bottom of the boxes. 

Procedure. " Do you see these boxes ? They all look the same. But 
they don't weigh the same. Some are heavy and some are light. I want you 
to find the heaviest and put it here. Then find the one which is a little less 
heavy, and place it next ; then the one which is still less heavy ; then the 
one which is lighter still ; and, last, the one which is lightest 1 here." (Point 
in each case to the appropriate place.) [Add, if the child fails through 
hesitation : " Do you understand ? Here the heaviest, then the next 
heaviest, then a lighter one, and then a lighter one still, and the lightest of all, 
here — all in a row according to their weight." But do not record the result 
thus obtained as an unqualified success. Binet explicitly says : " Some do 
not understand our instruction and remain motionless. So much the worse 
for them." 2 ] 

Allow three trials, if necessary, mixing the boxes in haphazard order 
again before each fresh trial. 

Evaluation. The arrangement must be absolutely correct in two out 
of three trials ; and the whole accomplished in three minutes. 

Of special interest and perhaps of even greater diagnostic value is the 
subject's procedure. Does he (a) fail to attack the test altogether, remain- 
ing motionless — piling up or playing with the boxes ; (6) grasp the idea of 
series, but not series by weight — arranging the boxes in a row haphazard ; 
(c) fail to grasp the idea of a descending series — picking out the lightest and 
heaviest, or heaviest only ; (d) fail to find an adequate method — picking 
out weights by absolute impression ; (e) pair them all systematically ; 
(/) fail merely to distinguish the differences of weight — through haste or 
poor sensibility (for methods of discriminating weights, see above, Test 19, 
p. 35) ; (g) correct the arrangement of any individual weight as he goes 
on, or (h) verify the arrangement of the whole series, when he has finished ? 
[The test seems improved if the differences in weight are more readily dis- 
tinguishable, and the task thus made purely a logical rather than partly a 
sensory one.] 

[Yerkes allows two trials ; and gives 2 points if all the weights are 
correctly placed, and 1 if all but one are correctly placed.] 

The average order of ease is : (i) 15 g., (ii) 3 g., (hi) 6 g., (iv) 12 g., 
(v) 9 g. 3 — the fifteen-gram weight being nearly always correctly placed, and 
the nine-gram most frequently wrong. 

i 1 ) Dr. Simon writes : " Your final indication, ' lightest of all ' " (my original phrase) " aids the child 
too much " ; and suggests " here one a little less heavy, and here one a little less heavy, and so on." Binet, 
however, specifies the final weight by the superlative. 

( 2 ) 1908 scale, loc. cit.. p. 221. 

(') The ease of the midmost, and, next, of those adjacent to it, has been described as " probably a general 
psychological law common to all series." It is, of course, due simply to the fact that, for the heaviest or 
lightest, there is only one weight differing from it by only 3 g., while for the other three there are two ; and 
for the midmost only are there two differing from it by only 6 g. The ease of 6 g , as contrasted with 12 g., 
agrees with Weber's laws : that of 15 g. as contrasted with 3 g. contradicts it, but is probably due to asking 
specifically for the heaviest first. 



52 

47. — Sentence Building with Three Words. 

Materials. Paper, pen, ink ; and a card with " London, river, money " 
written on it. 1 

Procedure. " I want you to make up a sentence Jor me with these three 
words in it — London, river, money." Hand the card to the subject, and 
repeat : " London, river, money. Write a sentence containing those three 
words." [Add, if the child fails through hesitation : " Just tell me some- 
thing with those three words in it." This, however, which constitutes an 
explanation of the word "sentence," is expressly disallowed by Binet.] 
Binet suggests reading the words several times ; and insists that something 
be written, whether it satisfies the child himself or not. Outside London 
it is customary to employ the name of the nearest town that is on a river ; 
but the change seems scarcely necessary. [Most American investigators, 
following Goddard, conduct this test orally. Binet's written procedure 
handicaps many backward children who would otherwise pass.] 

[Yerkes emphasises that one sentence is desired. Terman explains "sen- 
tence " — " a sentence is made up of words which say something " — and uses 
(i) boy, ball, river ; (ii) work, money, men ; (hi) deserts, rivers, lakes ; and 
requires two out of three to be satisfactory.] 

Evaluation. Allow one minute "for finding the sentence," "Three 
quarters of it should be written within that time " (Binet). 

A. One Idea or Sentence indicates a mental age of XL ; e.g., " In the river 
at London I found some money." " In the mint which is near the river at 
London money is made." " The river is a source of much money to London. ' ' 
A set of sentences in which the thought is well co-ordinated into a unitary 
story or description passes. " London is a big place. It has a river in it. And 
many people come there to make money." Binet cites stories of between thirty 
and forty words. With an intelligent child the key-words occupy leading 
positions in the thought, which has clearly been suggested by them. 

B. Two Distinct Ideas or Sentences indicate a mental age of X. ; e.g., 
" London has money and rivers." " There is a river in London ; I should 
like some money." 

C. Three Distinct Ideas or Sentences constitute a failure ; e.g., "London 
is a town ; (and) there is a big river ; (and) some people have money." 
[The addition of " in it " to the last two clauses would constitute a success.] 

Enter " 1," " 2," or " 3 " according to the number of sentences given ; 
and, in the detailed record, enter the sentences written and the time taken. 
At least three-quarters of the test should be written in a minute. 

Binet (but not Terman) expressly accepts sentences of types A and B 
even when absurd ; e.g., " London is a city of money by the rivers." " In 
London there is money, which has a large river." They indicate, he observes, 
weakness of judgment, but at the same time a mental age of X. or XL 
Complete omission of one or more words fails. 

Yerkes gives 4 points for one sentence, 2 for two sentences. 

Note, in addition, (i) the definiteness of the statement, and (ii) the 
logical intimacy of the associations formed, both with one another and with 
the key-words — points which, according to certain investigators, are par- 
ticularly significant of intelligence. 2 [Rational, rather than grammatical, 
coherence should have been made the basis of evaluation.] 

(') The last two words are not a precise translation of Binet's words — fortune, ruisseau- ; but the words 
selected by some translators — " fortune," " gutter " — do not conform to Dr. Simon's criterion, which he 
repeats for this test ; namely, that the English words should yield, as far as is possible without altering the 
general nature of the test, the original age-assignments. The card, I gather, is not always used. 

( 3 ) For a detailed study of the test, see Meumann, " Uber eine Neue Methode der Intelligenz-Prufung." 
Z A fur Pad. Psych.. 1912, p. 145. 



53 

Binet states that this is one of the rare cases in which a child may 
succeed by having heard of the test from another child. Should there be 
any likelihood of this, ask at the outset : "What do you think I have been 
asking the others to do with these words ? " and, if necessary, substitute 
other words. 

48. — Drawing Two Designs from Memory. 

Materials. Binet 's two designs, drawn previously on a single card or 
sheet, kept out of sight until required. A pencil and plain paper. A watch 
showing seconds. (See Figure 18, p. 113, Appendix II.) 

Procedure. " There are two easy drawings on this card. I want you 
to look at them very carefully until I take them away ; and then try if you 
can draw them both from memory on this paper afterwards. You will only 
see them for a very few seconds. Now look at them both carefully first of all. 
Ready ? Now ! " The drawings are held steadily in front of the child, the 
truncated pyramid on the left, for exactly 10 sees. ; and then taken away and 
concealed. " Now try and draw them for me here." 

[The plain paper should be previously placed ready in front of the child 
so that he does not forget the designs while paper is found. The pencil 
should be held out to him with the left hand, as the drawing is turned over 
with the right. If the pencil is handy at the start, the child may disturb the 
test by mistakenly attempting to copy them in the middle of the exposure.] 

Evaluation. (See Figure 6 (a) and (6).) The whole Of one and a half Of the 
other must be reproduced with fair correctness. No second attempt is allowed. 
Neatness of drawing does not count. The examiner must be careful not to 
interpret " fair exactness " more strictly for older than for younger children. 
The standard accepted in the case of this test is thus far below what the 
un instructed teacher would accept as a satisfactory reproduction. 

Several printed versions of the tests reproduce sample drawings 
for guidance in evaluating the results. Binet does not. If the examiner 
is in doubt, he may award the child a fraction instead of either " " or " 1." 
[Yerkes allots 2 points to each design according to their degree of merit. 
Melville gives sample drawings obtaining full, half, and no marks respec- 
tively. But for the Greek key pattern his second " no mark " sample appears 
better than his second " half mark " sample.] 

I suggest the following rough rules : — 

A. For the Greek Key Pattern to count as "half-correct," the drawing 
should show one only of the following errors : — 

(1) omitting or wrongly reproducing the right or left half of the draw- 

ing ; or, 

(2) omitting the three centre lines ; or, 

(3) omitting one or wrongly reproducing one or both terminal 

squares ; or, 

(4) substituting curves for right angles ; or, 

(5) inverting the whole figure. 

Two such mistakes {e.g., omitting the central pillar and twisting one 
" curl " outwards) constitute complete failure for the test. 

B. For the Truncated Pyramid to count as " half-correct," the drawing 
should show four of the following errors : — 

( 1 ) omitting or reversing the lateral decentralisation ; 

(2) substituting squares or upright oblongs for the broad oblongs ; 

(3) omitting one of the twelve lines ; 

(4) joining one of the oblique lines to the side of one of the oblongs 

instead of to the corner ; 

(5) doubling the relative size of the inner oblong. 
Five such errors result in failure. 



Figure 6 (a). 
Test 48. Memory Drawing. Evaluation of Results. 1 

(a). Children's Reproductions of the ' Frustum ' or ' Truncated Pyramid.' 

(i) Successful. 





(ii) Half Correct. 





(iii) Failures. 



Figure 6 (6). 

Test 48. Memory Drawing. Evaluation of Results x {continued). 

(b). Children's Reproductions of the Greek Key Pattern. 



(i) Successful. 



^LnJ 



-E 



(ii) Half Correct. 



3- 






(*) The above examples are not given as typical reproductions, but rather as borderline cases, where 
judgment has been found difficult, to illustrate the somewhat conventional application of our arbitrary 
principles of evaluation. Thus the successful reproductions are mostly poor ones, and the failures good ones. 



56 

Thus, a non-truncated pyramid (with the four lines of the inner oblong 
omitted) passes as half correct if the oblique lines meet in a point distinctly 
displaced from the centre of the larger oblong ; otherwise it fails. 

The size of the drawings, absolute, or relative to each other, their position 
relative to one another, the slight vertical decentralisation of the truncated 
cone, and (at any rate within wide limits) the relative size of the parts of 
the Greek key may be disregarded. 

As regards difficulty, with the copy we have used, the truncated cone 
is drawn successfully with far greater frequency than the Greek key pattern. 
A further investigation has shown that this is due to two factors. First, 
the figure on the left tends to attract attention first and most of all. This 
factor is the only one mentioned by Binet as operative. Reversing the 
position, however, reveals that, in addition, the truncated cone is easier 
intrinsically. The reversed arrangement, therefore, should, and in fact very 
nearly does, equalise the net difficulty of the two. To adopt this inter- 
change would be an obvious improvement. This may be effected without 
redrawing the figure, by simply showing it upside-down. 1 By some curious 
mischance, Binet's illustration shows the truncated cone on the right 2 — the 
illustration being copied by Whipple, 3 Goddard, 4 and by Terman. 5 Since, 
however, in the text Binet expressly states : " the section of the prism is 
always represented to the left," there would seem to be no doubt that for 
strict comparability with Binet's own procedure the arrangement I have 
printed and have used is the correct one. 



AGE XI. 

49. — Explaining Absurdities. 

Procedure. " Listen carefully to what I am going to say. There is 
something in it that is really quite silly [and impossible 6 ]. See if you can 
tell me what is wrong." 

(i) " ' One day, a man fell off his bicycle on to his head ; and was killed 
instantly. He was taken to the hospital ; and they fear he may never get 
better.' — What is there silly in that ? " 

(h) " ' I have three brothers — Jack, Tom, and myself.' — What is silly 
in that ? " (Female examiners must preface this with " A boy said to me " ; 
or else substitute " I have three sisters — Jane, Mary, and myself.") 

(iii) " ' Yesterday there was a railway accident ; but it was not a serious 
one. Only forty-eight people were killed.' — What is silly in that ? " 

(iv) " ' Once the body of a poor girl was found in a wood, cut into 
eighteen pieces. They say that she killed herself.' — What is silly in that ? " 

(v) " ' A man once said : " If I should ever grow desperate and kill 
myself, I shall not choose a Friday to do it on ; for Friday is an unlucky 

( x ) Strangely enough, Healy and Fernald represent this diagram upside-down, but with the prism still 
to the left. See Tests for Practical Mental Classification, p. 25 (a monograph containing many new and sug- 
gestive tests). 

( 2 ) Cf. Development of Intelligence (tr. Kite), pp. 60, 282. But in the Bulletin it is on the right. Cf. Method 
of Measuring Development of Intelligence (tr. Town), Fig. 8. 

( 8 ) Manual of Mental Tests, 1st ed., p. 48. The Greek Key pattern represented on the left both in the 
1905 and in the 1911 series. 

( 4 ) Binet's Measuring Scale, revised edition, p. 7. (5) Measurement of Intelligence, p. 261. 

(6) «« xrop precis : ' silly ' doit suffire " (Dr. Simon). 



57 

day, and would bring me bad luck." ' — [What is foolish in what the man 
said P 1 ]." 

[Terman, following Binet a little more literally, begins : "I am going 
to read a sentence, which has something foolish in it, some nonsense " (the 
phrase translates " une betise "). But it seems hardly desirable to read 
one's tests, if it can be avoided.] 

In accordance with general principles, I have rearranged the questions 
in order of increasing difficulty. 

[Whipple, Yerkes, and others, rightly objecting to the gruesome character 
of the above, have substituted other examples.] 

Evaluation. Three absurdities should be detected out 01 five. [Terman 
requires four. Wallin allows about 2 minutes only for the 3 correct answers. 
Terman suggests about 30 seconds for each ; but time-limits should not be 
rigidly pressed. If a child's first statement is not quite clear or conclusive — 
e.g., "myself is silly" in answer to (ii) — say: "Explain what you mean." 
Otherwise allow no second chance.] 

(i) Satisfactory : " He couldn't get well if he was already dead." " First 
you said he was dead ; and then you said he wouldn't get well again." 

Unsatisfactory : " They ought to have taken him to the mortuary." 
"If he fell off his bicycle he wouldn't fall on his head." "Riding a bike 
before he could balance." 

(ii) Satisfactory : " You have only two." " You are not your own 
brother." " You shouldn't count yourself." 

Unsatisfactory : " You should put yourself last." 

(iii) Satisfactory : "It must have been serious if forty-eight were killed," 
or " if anybody was killed." " If it wasn't serious, only one or two would 
have been killed." Dr. Simon agrees with Melville, and would accept : 
" Forty-eight isn't serious in war-time." 

Unsatisfactory : " Forty-eight people couldn't be killed in a railway 
accident." 

(iv) Satisfactory : "You can't cut yourself into eighteen pieces." "If 
she killed herself she couldn't cut herself up." 

Unsatisfactory : "It is silly to kill yourself," or "to cut yourself." 
" Nobody could cut her into eighteen pieces." " Nobody would kill them- 
selves," or " cut themselves." 

(v) Satisfactory : " If he killed himself, the day wouldn't matter." 
" He couldn't have bad luck if he was dead." 

Unsatisfactory : " He is silly to believe in bad luck." " Friday isn't 
unlucky." " Friday is all right because Jesus was killed on a Friday." 
" If he was desperate, he wouldn't wait till Friday." 

The average order of ease is as above, namely : (i) cyclist ; (ii) brothers 
(which is often peculiarly harder for children of poor, illiterate classes) ; 
(iii) railway accident (which, however, seems easier for boys than for girls) ; 
(iv) girl's suicide ; (v) suicide on Friday (much the hardest ; more suitable 
for age NIL). 

The emotional attitude of the child should be noted. 

50. — Answering Difficult Questions. 
Procedure. " [Can you] tell me this ? " 

(i) " What should you do if you found you were late on your way to 
school ? " 

(') " Un peu plus precis que ce que nous demandons habituellement " (Dr. Simon). 



58 

(ii) " If someone asked you what you thought of a boy [or, if the 
examinee is a girl, of a girl] 1 whom you did not know very well, what should 
you say ? " 

(iii) " Suppose 2 a boy does something that is unkind : why do we for- 
give him more readily if he was angry than if he was not angry ? " 

(iv) " Why should we judge a person by what he does and not by what 
he says ? " 3 

(v) " Suppose you were going to undertake something very important : 
what should you do first of all ? " 

Repeat a question once, if necessary, but do not vary the wording. 

Evaluation. Allow 20 sees, for reflection on each question. Three out 
of five must be answered satisfactorily. 

(i) Satisfactory : " Hurry " or " Run." [" Go straight to school " may 
be accepted, if it appears that the child sometimes plays or carries out 
errands on its way.] 

Unsatisfactory : By convention, anything not embodying the idea of 
hurrying : " Get the stick." " Leave earlier." " Get up sooner next time." 
" Ring the bell." " Get a note to excuse me." 

(ii) Satisfactory : Anything that suggests the need of making an enquiry 
or withholding an opinion : "I couldn't say anything." " I could not tell 
him without finding out." " Tell him to ask somebody else." " Say what 
I know and no more." [" I should say ' I do not know ' " seems a satis- 
factory statement ; but see next paragraph.] 

Unsatisfactory : Usually unintelligible : " You must make up some- 
thing." " Say he's rather nice." [" Say I don't know his name " is rejected 
by Simon as merely repeating part of the question. Cf. also Binet, 1908 
scale, tr. Kite, p. 226.] 

(iii) Satisfactory : Anything suggesting that anger may constitute an 
excuse, however badly expressed : " Because he didn't know what he was 
doing." " Because he'd be sorry afterwards." " Because he lost his temper." 

Unsatisfactory : Anything suggesting disapproval of anger : " He 
oughtn't to get angry." " Because he might hit me again." 

(iv) Satisfactory : Anything implying words are more deceptive than 
actions, though both need not be mentioned : " You can rely on his actions, 
but not on what he says." " Because he might not always speak the truth." 
" Actions speak louder than words." " Actions speak for themselves." 
" He might be boasting." " When he's angry, he might say things he didn't 
mean." 

Unsatisfactory : Usually unintelligible : " Because you can't tell." 
"You ought to speak the truth." 

t 1 ) I have here rendered " une persorme " " boy or girl," because otherwise I find children may give the 
right answer ("I couldn't say anything ") for a wrong reason — namely, because they assume at once that 
since he is a " person " (which to them implies an adult), they could not in any case be expected to deliver 
an opinion, though they might (as in no. iv) tacitly judge him. 

( 2 ) Dr. Simon thinks that in French, at any rate, this form, literally retranslated, would decompose the 
sentence too much, and render it too easy. In English, however, especially in class-room English, " suppose " 
is practically a conditional conjunction. He adds that the equivalence of the phrases is only to be judged by 
their effect in practice upon the age-assignments, and certainly, thus judged, my version does not make the 
Questions too easy. Binet, indeed, in both the 1908 and 1911 scales, placed this test at age X. 

( 3 ) Binet uses the abstract nouns " actions " and " words " ; but with this form the replies turn very 
largely on the child's accidental familiarity with the proverb : *' Actions speak louder than words." 



59 

(v) Satisfactory : Anything implying preliminary preparation as to 
method (reflection, practice, seeking advice or help), or preliminary con- 
sideration as to expediency or possibility : " Think it over." " Ask some- 
one about it." " Prepare for it." " Say my prayers." " Think whether I 
could manage it." " Ask someone to help me." 

Unsatisfactory : Usually unintelligible : " Not do it." " Try to do my 
best." [Somesay: " Wash," "tidy myself," "put on a clean collar " ; in that 
make it clear that you mean doing something important, not going some- 
where important.] 

The questions vary widely in difficulty. The easiest is answered by 
three times as many children at this age as is the hardest. The average order 
of ease is : (i) late for school (more suitable for age VII.) ; (ii) unknown boy ; 
(iii) actions and words ; (iv) forgiving angry blow (stated by Binet to be the 
hardest) ; (v) undertaking something important (in English, vague and 
difficult to understand, rather than hard to solve ; more suitable for age 
XII.). 

[For age X. Terman includes only (iii), (iv), and (v) ; and requires two 
correct replies out of three. He assigns no. (i) to age VIII. Yerkes includes 
(i) and (iii) from Test 37, and (iii), (iv) from the present test ; and allows 
case 2 points for each satisfactory answer.] 

Emotional reactions should be noted. 

51. — Giving 60 Words in Three Minutes. 

Procedure. " I want you to give me as many words as you possibly can 
in three minutes. Some children can give more than two hundred. Keep 
saying words like this till I stop you : ' box, coat, tree, cart,' and so on — 
any words you like. Are you ready ? Now start." If he breaks off, encourage 
him by saying : " Very good. Keep on." 

Note that the statement that some can give two hundred is deliberately 
inserted ; also give exactly the same four examples to every child. 

Evaluation. 60 words must be given exclusive of repetitions. If the 
child gives sentences, start him again, saying : " You must give separate 
words." Observe the exact time with the second-hand of a watch. Count 
the words as they are given by a stroke or other mark for each. [Yerkes 
gives 1 point for 30 to 44 words ; 2 for 45 to 59 ; 3 for 60 to 74 ; 4 for 
over 75.] 

It is interesting to record the changes in rate (by starting a fresh group 
of strokes after each half-minute), and the key-words of the child's various 
topics ; it is seldom possible to put down all the words. The average number 
of words given in the successive half -minutes by those who nearly or quite 
succeed in the test proved in our experiments to be as follows : — 

1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th half-minute 

19-3 13-4 10-3 8-5 7-3 6-6 words 

It will be noted that more than twice as many words are given in the first 
minute as in the last. The test consumes a disproportionate amount of time ; 
and, for rapid words, success or failure may often be inferred from the perform- 
ance during the first minute alone. Bright children tend to maintain a more 
nearly uniform rate ; young or backward decline very rapidly. 

The words themselves illustrate individual differences in mental con- 
tent in a most striking way. 1 It is often interesting to keep this test until 

I 1 ) The associative reaction, both in this and other forms, has been extensively used by Freud and 
other psychoanalysts. An elaborate early study was made by Binet, with his two daughters as subjects. 
See L'Etude Experimentale de V Intelligence, esp. Chapters II to IV. 



60 

last, and at the close to ask the child how each word or topic came to be 
thought of. Among girls the introspections are highly suggestive. Even 
without such explanations, the examiner may note the following : a tendency 
to long themes, or to short themes constantly changed (a change of topic 
with almost every word is, as Binet notes, characteristic of young and of 
backward children ; they exhaust an idea in barely naming it ; on the other 
hand, bright children may be delayed by too persistent an adherence to the 
same theme, when all the commoner associations with it have been ex- 
hausted) ; the general character of the ideas — objective or subjective 
(ego-centric) ; the topic of the themes — objects in the room, objects 
seen at home, or out of doors, the child's own person, recent memories 
(recent lessons, stories recently read), remote memories ; the general nature, 
richness, and refinement of the vocabulary drawn upon — abstract words (often 
a sign of culture or intellect), unusual words, parts of speech other than 
nouns, repetitions (often suggestive of the mental stereotypy of the deficient) ; 
the type of connection between the words (logical association — especially 
association by similarity, accidental association — of time, place, etc., verbal 
associations — by rhyme, etc.). Occasionally, a sudden delay or other emo- 
tional reaction may suggest that the child has approached a " complex " 
(a system of strongly toned emotional ideas, more or less repressed). 

[Since so many children tend to enumerate simply the objects that they 
see around them, some investigators require the child to shut his eyes (a little 
embarrassing to a nervous child) ; and others to repeat only names of things. 
Terman prefers to work in a room as bare as possible. I understand, how- 
ever, that Dr. Simon does not consider such precautions important ; and 
the child's natural tendency is itself of interest.] 

52. — Repeating Numbers. 

Procedure. " Listen, and say these numbers after me." 

(For use only after failure in first set.) 
"9684751" | "4820365" "5928136" 

Evaluation. One correct repetition out of three trials counts as success. 
(See p. 25, Test 2.) 

53. — Sentence- Building with Three Words. 

Materials. Paper, pen and ink, and a card with " London, river, 
money " written on it. 

One Idea or Sentence. 

Procedure and Evaluation. (See p. 52, Test 47 A.) 



AGE XII. 
54. — Giving Three Words to Rhyme. 

Procedure. " Do you know what a rhyme is ? When two words end 
with the same sound, we call them rhymes. ' Jill ' rhymes with ' Hill,' 
because they both end in ' ill.' Do you understand ? . . . Now can you give 
me three words which rhyme with ' obey ' ? " 

Evaluation. The child must give three genuine words that rhyme in 
1 minute. Binet's instructions to the child ask for " other words " or " all 
the words." It saves time to specify three to the child. If the child gives 
nothing, or has not given enough, urge him by saying : " What (else) rhymes 
with 'obey' ?" Apparently "disobey" may be accepted as one of the 



61 

three. Monosyllables ("play," "bay") are quite as correct as dissyllables 
("to-day," "away," "hurray"). Some children lose time in searching for 
the latter only. 1 

[Terman> Goddard, Kuhlman require 3 words to be given for 2 out of 3 
of the following : "day," "mill," "spring." With these words Terman 
locates the test at age IX. Others use the word " defender," and locate it 
at age XV. Others, again, require only two correct rhymes, or allow 1 \ mins. 
for the three, if the two have been given in 1 min.] 

55. — Rearranging Mixed Sentences. 

Materials. Three cards containing three mixed sentences. (See Figure 
19, pp. 115, Appendix II.) 

Procedure. " Put these words in order, and find out the sentence which 
they make." [Many children do not gather from Binet's instructions that 
they are to read out a sentence. But he implies that not to understand his 
instructions is to fail. If they fail, it is interesting to see if they would have 
succeeded with simpler instructions. " Here is a puzzle for you. Can you 
read what this card says ? " (The child reads it as it stands.) "You don't 
understand what that means, do you ? The words are all mixed up in the 
wrong order. Now do you think you could put them together in their proper 
order, and read them out so that they make sense ? "] 

[If the child, reminiscent of the word-building tests, inserts words, say : 
"No, you must not add any other words." If, however, he omits a word, 
do not give him a second chance with the same exercise.] 

Evaluation. Two Correct solutions must be given out of three. Only 
1 minute is allowed for each. 

[Yerkes allots 2 points to each reply.] 

Correct solutions are : — 
(i) "A good dog defends his master bravely." 
" A dog defends his good master bravely." 

[" A master defends his good dog bravely " is, according to Binet, 
" poor " and apparently incorrect. Terman gives half credit to the two last.] 
(ii) " I asked my (the) teacher to correct the (my) paper." 
(hi) " We started for the country early this morning." 
" This morning we started for the country early." 2 

Most investigators accept a forced or rhetorical order : e.g., " For the 
country this morning we started early." 

The order of ease is as above ; the last is distinctly harder than the 
other two. 

56. — Describing Pictures : Interpretation. 

Procedure. (See p. 27, Test 6, C.) 

Evaluation. The child goes beyond what is actually visible in the 
picture and mentions the situation or emotion it suggests. 

(i) " They're moving." " They've a heavy load." " They can't pay 
their rent." " A rag-picker." 

(*) Dr. Simon sanctions these suggestions, writing : " Toutes ces remarques semblent justes." 
( 2 ) The more literal renderings of the French idioms, given by other translators, are in (i> " courage- 
ously" for "bravely," and in (iii) "at an early hour" for "early this morning." This alters the difficulty of 
the test as compared with the French results. In a discussion on this point, Dr. Simon writes : " ' Bravely ' 
convient tres bien. Je crois que votre traduction ' this early morning ' (sic) est plus accessible que notre 
expression ' de bonne heure.' Je l'accepterais toute fois ." 



62 

(ii) " Miserable," " poor," " have no home." " The man is saying his 
prayers." " His daughter " (or " wife ") " is sitting beside him." " A man 
in trouble." 

(iii) " A prisoner." " He wants to get out." " He's trying to see 
what's in the yard." " He's lonely," or " thinking." " A man on board 
ship." 

AGE XIII. 
57. — Resisting Suggestion. 1 

Materials. A book of six leaves with two lines drawn in the same straight 
line on one page in each opening. (See Figure 20 (a) to (/), pp. 117-127, 
Appendix II.) In the first three pairs, the right hand line is always longer 
than the left, and each pair longer than the last ; in the next there pairs 
all the lines are equal. The lengths are given on page 77. 

Procedure. For the first three pairs : " Which is the longer of those 
two lines ? " For the last three, without changing the tone : " And of 
these ? " the question being repeated for each pair. 

Evaluation. Record whether child's judgments are right or wrong in 
each case ; especially with reference to the last three. The child succeeds 
if he judges two out of the three equal pairs to be equal. [In one version 
(Bulletin) the child is given \ mark — i.e., one-tenth of a year — if he judges 
one of the last three pairs to be equal.] 

[Yerkes allots one point for each of the last three replies and accepts 
any resistance to suggestion, whether the child judges the line on the left 
to be equal or greater than that on the right.] 

Note whether the child's errors seem attributable strictly to suggestion, 
to inattention, to impulsive heedlessness, or to a genuine judgment that the 
equal lines are unequal after studying them. Note also any emotional 
reaction. 

[As an index of intelligence there is now general agreement that this 
test is comparatively worthless. It is one of the very few omitted by Terman 
from the Stanford Revision. Suggestibility is a most important characteristic 
for investigation in the case of backward or delinquent children. But the 
particular forms of suggestibility that are operative in practical or social 
life are not elicited by such tests as the above. A far better test is provided, 
when the child is describing a picture from memory (" Aussage " or " Testi- 
mony " test), by cross-examining him indirectly upon fictitious objects not 
really present in the picture {e.g., in picture (i), " Was the little boy wearing 
a straw hat, or a cap ? ") But the acceptance of suggestion will reveal itself 
throughout the whole course of the examination ; and should be noted 
accordingly.] 

58. — Solving Circumstantial Problems. 

Procedure. [" Can you guess the answer to this riddle ? "] 
(i) " One day a woman, walking in Epping Forest, stopped still, terribly 
frightened. Then she hurried to the nearest police-station, and" 
told the policeman she had just seen, hanging from 2 the branch 
of a tree, a — what do you think it was she saw ? " 
(ii) " My next door neighbour has had three visitors. First, a doctor 
called ; then a lawyer ; and then a clergyman. What do you 
think has been happening there ? " 

t 1 ) The age-assignment of this test is particularly difficult. See footnote I 1 ) p. 211. 
( 2 ) '* ' Hanging from,' me parait " (says Dr. Simon) " plus precis que notre simple preposition ' a.' Mais 
c'est peut-etre inevitable." 



63 

[Terman adds a third problem ; and requires two correct out of three. 
There is, however, a general agreement that the above questions are ill 
chosen.] 

Evaluation. Both questions must be correctly answered. 

(i) Satisfactory : Replies must contain the idea of someone hanged. 
[If the child answers " a man," " a dead person," ask : " How did he get 
up in the tree ? "] 

[A large number of children from better homes are at this age almost 
ignorant of such tragedies, even from gossip or reading. They reply : "It 
was only a bit of a sheet," or " a boy trying to frighten her." In such cases 
I would allow a second answer, first explaining : " No, she was not a silly 
woman, easily frightened " ; or " it was daytime " ; but insist on the con- 
ventional reply, before scoring the answer as correct.] 

Unsatisfactory : " A bird," " someone robbing a nest," " an escaped 
German," " a monkey," " a serpent." 

[Many investigators accept such responses as the last, if the child can 
explain them intelligently ; e.g., "the serpent had escaped from the Zoo," 
or "perhaps it happened in America." The specification of a well-known 
neighbouring wood, which should be substituted for " Epping Forest " else- 
where than in London (Binet speaks of "the forest of Fontainebleau "), 
excludes many of these doubtful replies.] 

(ii) Satisfactory : " Someone is dying." " He is very ill." 

Binet accepts the latter ; but it could be inferred from the visit of the 
doctor and clergyman alone. Dr. Simon, however, thinks "very" implies 
a vague appreciation of the presence of the other visitors. [If the child 
replies "ill" or " very ill," I would then ask: "Why did the lawyer" 
(and " clergyman ") " come ? " and accept only a logical answer within the 
child's range of knowledge. Terman expects the child to understand that 
the lawyer came to " make " (read ?) the will and the clergyman to " preach 
the funeral." But much vaguer answers should, I think, be accepted ; e.g., 
the lawyer came to arrange about the man's money, the clergyman to pray for 
him ; or both came because he wanted to confess something before he died ; 
but not, " the clergyman was his son " ; the lawyer " a friend of the family." 
As a rule, unless the child fails to reply or replies very absurdly, I would, 
by convention, accept "very ill " and reject "ill." Imaginative embellish- 
ments — e.g., unwarranted specifications, "his child is dying," etc. — should be 
noted. Occasionally a child can ingeniously and logically justify such in- 
ferences as " a murder," " a marriage," " a baby was born " (" the lawyer 
was employed to get the man to marry the girl " : Terman). But, as a rule, 
these replies are mere invalid guesses. 

Thus evaluated, the second problem proves somewhat easier, though 
comparatively few children in elementary schools connect lawyers specifically 
with wills.] 



AGE XIV. 
59. — Repeating Syllables. 

(26 syllables) " The other morning I saw in the street a tiny yellow dog. 
Little Maurice has spoilt his new apron." 

For Procedure and Evaluation (see p. 28, Test 7, xi). 



64 

60. — Defining Abstract Terms. 

Procedure. " [Can you tell me this ?] What is [meant by 1 ] . . . 
(i) kindness?" (ii) "... justice?" (iii) "... charity?" 

[For " kindness " — undoubtedly an unsatisfactory stimulus-word — 
Yerkes substitutes " obedience," and allots 2 points for each reply. Terman 
substitutes "pity," "revenge," and "envy" for (i), and requires 3 correct 
replies out of 5.] 

Evaluation. Two must be correctly defined out Of three. 

Satisfactory definitions — 

For (i), contain the double idea (or instance) of (a) affection, tenderness, 
politeness, or consideration, which is (b) shown to others. E.g., "being polite 
or good to others " is correct. " Being kind," " doing something good " are 
inadequate ; 

For (ii), contain the idea of treating people according to their merits, 
or of protecting the innocent and their interests, or of punishing the guilty. 
E.g. " When you punish wicked people," " playing fair " ; 

For (iii), contain the two ideas of (a) poor or unfortunate people, and (6) 
showing kindness to them. E.g., " When you give poor people some money," of 
" giving alms." 

If a child, in his reply, uses the same word or a derivative, e.g., for 
" kindness," " being kind to someone," ask : " Yes ; but what does that 
mean ? " 

AGE XV. 

61. — Drawing from Imagination the Cuts in a Folded Paper. 

Materials. Two sheets of paper about 15 cm. (6 inches) square- A 
pencil. One sheet has been folded in four like a letter ready for an envelope, 
and reopened. In the middle of the edge which presents but a single fold 
a small triangular notch, about 1 cm. deep, is drawn. 2 (See Figure 7 (a).) 

Procedure. " Here is a sheet of paper that I am going to fold into four." 3 

(The examiner refolds the paper while the child watches.) " Suppose now 
I cut out a notch, just here. When the paper is unfolded again, what would 
it look like ? Will you show me on this piece of paper how and where it 
would be cut ? " The examiner places the folded paper in front of the child 
with the corner showing the folds towards him, and the pencil-mark upper- 
most and visible. The child must not touch the paper shown to him, nor 
fold another sheet. [Beware of saying " draw the holes," as this of itself 
indicates that more than one hole is required.] 

Evaluation. Two diamond-shaped holes should be drawn in a line with 
each other, one near the centre of each half of the paper. (See Figure 7 (6).) 

[It appears indifferent whether the perforations should lie in a hori- 
zontal or in a vertical straight line, or whether the major axis of the tiny 

(*) Dr. Simon would prefer, " What is kindness ? " 

( 2 ) Binet says drawn : but his illustration, unlike mine, shows it actually cut out. 

( 3 ) Binet's fuller description of the procedure (1905 scale, tr. Kite, p. 67) varies somewhat from the 
ater (1908 scale, ib., p. 234), which,- at first sight, implies that the paper is presented already folded. But I 

understand a change in the method was not intended. Goddard, I am told, folds the paper in front of the 
child. Terman also does so, drawing the child's attention especially to each fold ; and, further, actually 
cuts the paper, which necessitates a fresh pattern-sheet for each child. Saffiotti cuts off the folded corner 
also, thus producing three diamond-shaped perforations. Dr. Simon prefers that the paper should be folded 
and cut afresh for each child. 



65 



Figure 7. 
Test 61. Folded Paper. 

(a). As shown. 




(&). As reproduced. 




diamonds drawn should be vertical or horizontal. To justify this I would 
suggest that the paper should always be square, and that angle of the notch 
be a right angle. Terman insists on the creases being drawn ; but disregards 
the shape.] 

Note if the child has been helped by special previous experience ; e.g. y 
a course on paper folding. 

62. — Giving Differences between Abstract Terms. 

Procedure. "What is the difference between ..." 

A. (i) " pleasure and happiness "... 
(ii) " poverty and misery "... 

(iii) " evolution and revolution ? " . . . 

[The words suggested by Binet (1911) are : — 

B. (i) paresse, oisivete ; 

(ii) evenement, avenement (the latter variously rendered " advent " 

(Goddard) or " prevent " (Huey) ) ; 
(iii) evolution, revolution ; and in 1908 scale : — 

C. (i) pauvrete, miserie, instead of paresse, oisivete ; and, in addition 

to (ii) and (iii), as above — 
(iv) plaisir, bonheur ; 
(v) orgeuil, pretention.] 

The additional pairs, however, are extremely difficult to translate satis- 
factorily. For an efficient test it would probably be better to adopt and try 
out fresh pairs of words altogether. "Attention " and " intention " (Saffiotti 
and others) give far more satisfactory results than any of the words literally 
translated. In discussing the selection of the three most appropriate English 
words, Dr. Simon wrote : " l'experience peut seule prononcer." My experi- 
ence and my experiments are alike in favour of the provisional choice sug- 
gested above. 

[Terman uses A (ii), (iii), and B (i) ("laziness" and "idleness"); adds 
"character" and "reputation"; and requires three correct replies out 
of four.] 

Evaluation. Two out of three must be correctly answered. Good 
replies should bring out an opposition or antithesis between the differen- 
tiating ideas ; e.g., in (i) "happiness " should be contrasted as superior to, or 
more general than, " pleasure " ; in (ii) having little money should be 
contrasted with being in misery or pain ; in (iii) slow change should be 
contrasted with sudden change. But Binet allows mere differences ; e.g., 
evolution is the movement of troops, revolution is an insurrection. [Terman, 
however, does not accept definition without a real contrast.] 

The average order of ease is : (i) poverty and misery ; (ii) pleasure and 
happiness ; (iii) evolution and revolution. 

63. — Drawing the Reversed Triangle. 

Materials. Paper and pencil for drawing. An oblong card, about 10 X 15 cm. 
(4x6 inches), cut across the diagonal, as used for the divided card test. 
The card is first laid on the table before the subject with the cut edges 
touching. 

Procedure. (See Figure 8(a).) " Look carefully at the lower piece of this 
card. Suppose I turn it over and lay this edge " (pointing to line A — C without 



67 

moving the card) " along this edge " (A — B of the upper triangle) ; " and 
suppose that this corner " (C) " is placed just at this point " (B) ; " what 
would it all look like ? Now I am going to take the piece away " (remove the 
lower triangle from view). " Imagine it placed as I told you ; and draw its 
shape in the proper position. Begin by drawing the shape of the top triangle." 
Evaluation. (See Figure 8(6).) The essential points are : (i) A C B must 
be preserved as a right angle ; (ii) A C must be made shorter than A B ; 
[ (iii) Saffiotti adds : B C must retain approximately its original length, as 
the shortest of the three lines]. 

AGE XVI. 
64. — Summarising Hervieu's Reflections on Life. 

Procedure. " Attend carefully to what I am going to read to you. When 
I have finished I shall want you to tell me in your own words the meaning 
of what I read. Listen : 

" 'Many opinions have been given on the value of life. Some say it is 
good ; others say it is bad. It would be truer to say that it is just medium. For, 
on the one hand, the happiness it brings us is never so great as we should 
like ; and, on the other hand, the misfortunes it brings us are never so great 
as our enemies would want us to have. It is this mid-way quality that 
makes life fair ; or, at least, prevents it from being altogether unfair.' 1 

" Now see if you can give me, in your own words, the sense of what I have 
just read to you." 

[There are so many different ways of emphasising the words in the long, 
penultimate sentence — each impressing the child's intelligence and memory 
in a different way — that I have ventured for uniformity to indicate by 
italics where the stress should chiefly fall.] 

Evaluation. The central thought must be understood and these three 
ideas reproduced : (i) Life is neither good nor bad, but medium, for (ii) it is 
not so good as we wish, but (iii) better than what others wish for us. The 
terms and expressions matter little. [Melville omits "but medium" as 
essential to (i). Binet includes it, but does not specify the central thought 
as containing three or more subordinate ideas.] 

Note whether the child fails through lack (a) of comprehending the 
abstract ideas, or (6) of accurate memory (rarer). Note also inventions and 
embellishments. 

65. — Giving the Differences between President and King. 

Procedure. " There are three chief differences between a President of a 
Republic and a King. [Can you] tell me what they are ? " [. . . " Can you 
think of any of them ? "] 

Evaluation. Two of the following differences, apparently, must be 
given. [Some consider Binet required all of the first three.] 

(i) A Bang inherits his crown (or, has royal blood) ; a President is 

elected, 
(ii) A King is king for life ; a President's term of office is limited. 

(*) " C'est cette m^diocrite' qui la rend Equitable . . ." proved peculiarly difficult to render fairly. Most 
translators retain the same words, " mediocrity " and " equitable " ; but they have a more bookish ring in 
English ears. Dr. Simon comments : " Any slight difference in meaning would be secondary ; and your 
translation seems sufficiently close in difficulty and sense." 



68 

(iii) The powers of a King are greater than those of a President. 

(iv) A King is not directly responsible to the people ; a President is. — 
Added by Melville in place of (iii). [" A President is head of a 
republic ; a King is head of a monarchy or kingdom," seems 
acceptable as referring to this difference ; though Terman rejects 
it, presumably as being tautologous.] 

Such differences as " a King has a crown " ; "a palace," etc., are not 
to be regarded as " chief " differences. 

[This test is obviously more suited to French and American children 
than to English. The third difference is hardly true of an English king.] 



4. OTHER VERSIONS. 

Apart from the necessities of translation, most versions of the Binet- 
Simon scale — for example, the Vineland Version, drawn up by Dr. Goddard, 
to whom the popularity of the scale is largely due — depart from the original 
only by an occasional attempt to improve the procedure or to amend the 
problems, and by the rare addition of one or two further tests. Three 
revisions, however, are of a more radical nature ; and merit a brief notice. 

The Stanford Revision and Extension. 

The Stanford version 1 contains ninety tests, six for each age-level from 
three to ten (each test counting as the equivalent of two mental months), 
eight for age twelve, six each for age fourteen, for " adults " and for 
"superior adults," and, finally, sixteen alternative tests. Its salient^ virtue 
lies in the inclusion of many excellent tests, both fresh and familiar, 
intended for the higher ages. In those individual cases where Binet's 
original problems yield, with the unmodified procedure, an incomplete or 
questionable result, these accessories will be found extremely fruitful. 

The new tests are as follows : For age IV., (1) discriminating forms 
(circle, square, triangle, etc.) — a test originally proposed by Kuhlmann ; 
(2) easy questions (" what must you do when cold," "sleepy," " hungry ? ") 
from Binet's 1905 scale. For age VII., (3) tying a shoestring round the 
examiner's finger in a bow-knot (prepared model shown) ; (4) repeating 
digits from memory in reverse order — a test suggested by Bobertag — three 
digits for age VII., four for age IX., five for age XII., six for average adult, 
seven for superior adult. For age VIII., (5) marking with a pencil on a 
simple map the path to be followed in searching for a lost ball in a circular 
field entered from a gate : absence of plan fails ; an imperfect plan {e.g., fan- 
shaped, wheel-shaded paths) is accepted for age VIII. ; an adequate plan 
(parallel paths with no intersection or breaks, e.g., perfect spiral, concentric 
circles, transverse parallel paths) is required for age XII. ; (6) giving simi- 
larities — a test borrowed from Binet's 1905 series ; two things are to be com- 
pared for age VIII. (wood and coal, ship and automobile, etc.) ; three for 
age XII. (snake, cow, sparrow ; knife-blade, penny, piece of wire, etc.) ; 
(7) defining words, with a view to an estimation (by sample) of the size of 
the child's vocabulary : 20 words are to be defined at eight, 30 at ten, 40 at 
twelve, 50 at fourteen, 65 by an average adult, 75 by a superior adult ; the 
words are taken from a prepared list drawn up approximately in order of 
difficulty, ranging from "orange" and "bonfire," to "retroactive" and 

(*) L. M. Terman, The Measurement of Intelligence. Harrap & Co.. 1919. 



69 



A 



Figure 8. 

Test 63. Reversed Triangle. 

(a). As presented to the child (letters not to be shown). 




B 



(6). As drawn by the child (letters not to be shown). 




70 

" theosophy." 1 For age X., (8) Healy's " Construction Puzzle A " — a form- 
board consisting of five oblong pieces fitting together into an oblong tray ; 
the material is an improvement upon the simple oblong card divided only 
into two triangular pieces, although Binet himself attempted similar puzzles 
with more numerous pieces and found them unsatisfactory. For age XII., 
(9) interpreting the morals of five well-known fables (" The Fox and the 
Goose," "The Milkmaid and her Eggs," etc.) ; two correctly interpreted 
(or the equivalent in half-credits) are accepted for age XII., and four for 
average adult level. For age XIV., (10) folding a paper once, twice, etc., 
to six times, cutting a single hole in the folded edge, and requiring the 
subject to infer the general rule for discovering from the number of folds 
how many holes there will be ; (11) three arithmetical problems (such 
as, "how much will seven feet of cloth cost at fifteen cents a yard ? ") ; 
(12) interchanging in imagination the positions of the large and small hands 
of a clock (supposed to point originally, e.g., to twenty-two minutes past 
six), and stating the time then indicated — a test first propounded by Binet 
in the 1905 scale, and afterwards included by Goddard and Kuhlmann. 
For "average adults," (13) stating how many boxes there would be if a 
large box contained, e.g., three smaller, each in turn containing three tiny 
ones ; (14) translating " come quickly " into a diagram code from memory 
— suggested first by Healy and Fernald, and subsequently incorporated into 
a revision of the Binet scale by Goddard. 2 (15) comprehending physical 
relations (the path of a cannon-ball ; the weight of a bucket containing 
water (45 lbs.) and a fish (5 lbs.) when "the water is holding up the fish " ; 
stating why to hit a quart can with a rifle is easier at fifty yards than at 
ten yards). For "superior adult," (16) an ingenuity test (given, e.g., a 
3-pint and a 5-pint vessel to measure out exactly seven pints of water ; and 
similarly with other vessels and other quantities). 

Other reforms are the addition of better or more numerous examples 
{e.g., for absurdities, and circumstantial problems) ; the allowance of more 
numerous trials ; and the provision of a more definite method of scoring 
{e.g., partial credits for partial success in certain tests). 

The final version of the Stanford Revision reached us too late for the 
new tests to be incorporated into the present investigation. We are now 
attempting to adapt them for use with London children. It appears likely, 
however, that considerable modifications will need to be made, chiefly 
upon the following grounds. 

(1) The older children, upon whose performances the Stanford Revision 
was based, appear to have been of a somewhat higher intellectual level than 
the average child in the ordinary elementary schools under the London 
County Council. On the other hand, the younger children appear to have 
been slightly more backward in the scholastic tests, owing perhaps to later 

(*) Compare the Definition test below, pp. 230. 

( 2 ) The code, said to have been largely used in the American Civil War, is of the following con- 
struction : — 



(X 


d 


<3 


b 


e 


h 


c 


f 


I 



"c 



J • 


na • 


■t> 


k- 


n • 


■1 


1- 


o • 


• r 





ome. qwcklu 



■-- nnun EArn^^A 



71 

admission to school. Terman's subjects are said to have been drawn from 
schools in middle-class areas in American cities ; and, therefore, in social 
status, must have been distinctly superior to the average London child, and 
still more superior to the classes from whom defectives and delinquents are 
usually drawn and for whom the Binet-Simon scale has in the past been 
most commonly used. Terman puts the average level of the adult popula- 
tion at sixteen years ; whereas the recent results of the tests, as applied to 
recruits for the American Army, puts that level at but little over thirteen 
years with tests so standardised. 1 

(2) To administer the tests as revised and standardised by Terman now 
consumes nearly double the original amount of time — in my experience 
rarely less than one hour for younger children and for the brightest of the 
older children nearly two. The alterations are so sweeping that compara- 
bility with earlier investigations made with the Binet-Simon scale has 
almost vanished ; hence, little could be lost, if the scale were shortened by 
excising those of the original tests which are now known to be almost worth- 
less — sex, surname, date, months, two lines, comparing faces, and the original 
circumstantial problems. Similarly, in translating the reading and absurdi- 
ties tests, it would have been well either to have retained the Binet-Simon 
material in its original form — a form admittedly unsatisfactory, but still 
comparable with previous investigations — or else to have entirely discarded 
the hard prose-passage and the gruesome anecdotes. 

(3) The use of American coins in the materials, and of American money- 
values in the problems, prevent many of the tests being transferred to 
English schools, in their present form and with their present age-assignments. 
Similarly, American phraseology and colloquialisms will need to be elimi- 
nated. For example, the English six-year-old child would hardly under- 
stand the question : " What's the thing to do, if you're going some place 
and miss your car ? " or " When you notice on your way to school that you 
ar6 in danger of being tardy ? " Many of the words in the vocabulary test 
suffer from the same disadvantage. On the other hand, the necessary altera- 
tions, particularly in the money tests and arithmetical problems, may 
seriously disturb the value and the level of the tests. 

(4) Many of the new tests — e.g., the ball and field problem, tying the 
bow-knot, reversing the hands of the clock — do not, with London children, 
show so high a correlation as, from their ingenious character, might perhaps 
be inferred ; and, in any case, the procedure still seems improvable ; for 
example, in the second of these tests, the children are easily embarrassed 
by being required to tie the knot round the examiner's finger ; and, in the 
instructions for the first test, it is not made quite explicit that the small 
circle on the paper represents a large field, nor are the terms "force " and 
"direction " intelligible to a child barely eight, nor are all the XIL-year-old 
plans (e.g., the concentric but discontinuous circles) as shown on the score 
card really superior to all the VHI.-y ear-old plans (e.g., the rough but con- 
tinuous spiral) ; and several in both sets are really impossible. On the 
other hand, many of the new tests appear to be of much value— particularly 
those for older and brighter children. 

(5) The scale still retains a marked linguistic bias. This is shown by 
Terman's own observation that " in a large majority of cases the vocabulary 
test alone will give an intelligence quotient within 10 per cent, of that secured 
by the entire scale." Such problems as Porteus' maze-tests, Abelson's 
geometrical instruction tests, and the pictorial forms of many of the 

(') See, however, note on the upper limit of mental growth, p. 244. 



72 

American Army tests might well have been substituted for the feebler 
linguistic tests. 

Nevertheless, however imperfect the Stanford Version may seem to 
analytic criticism, it still remains, so far as can be judged from a brief 
preliminary trial upon London children, the most effective, as it is the most 
radical, of all the foreign revisions. 

The Point-Scale Method. 

Yerkes's Point-Scale 1 consists of twenty exercises taken, with one ex- 
ception, from the Binet-Simon series. The addition is a test which was, 
I believe, first used for the measurement of intelligence by myself, and which 
I then designated the "Analogies " test. 2 Most of Binet's information tests 
are omitted. And the scale as a whole loses much of its character of an 
instructions test, the examiner being warned not to proceed with any test 
until he is sure the child understands the directions. 

In accordance with a suggestion of Huey's, partial credit is given to 
the various performances of the children according to their merit, and not 
invariably by the all-or-none, pass-or-fail method of Binet. Thus, for re- 
peating three figures the child scores one mark, for repeating four figures 
an additional mark, and so on ; similarly in the picture tests, " enumerating " 
scores one mark, " describing " two, " interpreting " three. Where more 
than one mark is allotted by Yerkes to any one test, I have noted the fact 
in the instructions above under the sub-title " evaluation." The grand 
maximum in the Point-Scale is 100. Por various ages, sexes, and social 
stations, norms are computed in terms of the average number of points 
scored ; and, having none of the fixity of an age-scale, these norms can be 
freely readjusted and rapidly revised. This is an unquestionable advantage. 
But the principle can readily be applied to the Binet scale in its usual form by 
merely counting the number of tests passed either actually or by implica- 
tion ; and, if necessary, allowing fractions for partial success. In either case 
age-averages are still needed for the interpretation of the scores. 

By using for partial performances entire marks or " points " instead 
of fractions, certain tests in the Point-Scale are given a maximum larger 
than unity ; and thus carry a greater weight than others. Were this weight- 
ing of the various tests determined by their diagnostic significance, the 
modification might be of great value. With English children, however, value 
and maximum score, as suggested by Yerkes, do not at all correspond. 
Arranging the five weights is to score at most only two points. Interpreting 
the three pictures — a much poorer test, neither four and a half times as good, 
nor four and a half times as difficult as the other — is to score nine points, 
nearly one-tenth of the grand maximum. 

Brevity is secured by rejecting most of the tests that depend, like 
reading and writing, upon school instruction, or, like the coin tests, upon 
special experience. On the other hand, several poorer tests are still retained, 
e.g., suggestion (which scores three points) and comparing faces, weights, 
and lines. The memory tests, too, are somewhat extravagantly weighted, 
scoring fifteen points in all. 

There is no guarantee that the points represent equal units along a 
linear scale. Clearly a point earned in the weights test is of more value than 
a point earned in the picture test. And the various age-levels are unevenly 
represented. Most of the tests falling in our assignments below age IV. 
and above age XII. are omitted. The three ages IV., V., VI. yield thirteen 

t 1 ) Yerkes, Bridges, and Hardwick. A Point Scale for Measuring Ability, 1915. ( 2 ) See below, pp. 226-8. 



73 

tests ; the next three yield only seven ; for the next three, however, all 
our tests (except rhymes) are retained, and the analogies are added- — eleven 
tests in all ; and, for ages beyond, nearly all the original tests, meagre though 
they were, are dropped. Accordingly, for the two chief practical purposes — 
examining borderline cases of suspected deficiency at the usual age of entrance 
to special schools, and examining supernormal and scholarship children at 
the older ages — the revision appears to be, for English children, no great 
advance upon the original. For theoretical suggestiveness, on the other 
hand, the work done with this scale, both by its authors and by those who 
have since employed it, is of the highest interest and importance. 1 

The Treves-Saffiotti Method. 

A modification of the Binet-Simon scale, which, among English-speaking 
investigators, has attracted but little recognition, is that elaborated in Italy 
by Saffiotti. The work was originally commenced in collaboration with 
Treves, who died in the same year as Binet. The changes the writers have 
proposed are principally two : first, the tests are to be grouped not only by 
age, but also by school-class ; secondly, the children tested are to be graded 
according to their success qualitatively rather than quantitatively. For 
children of a given age in a given class there are allotted three sets of tests — 
easy, medium, and hard. According to their success in these the children are 
grouped as deboli, medii, and forti — dull, average, and able — and marked D, 
M, or F. If time allows, the children may be tested with other sets of tests 
than those immediately appropriate to their level ; and, according to their 
further success in these, the children in each group are again subdivided into 
three finer grades. There are thus in all nine qualitative grades — designated 
most conveniently by the letters dD, mD, fD, dM, mM, fM, dF, mF, fF, i.e., 
dullest of the dull, average-dull, brighter dull, dull-average, and so forth. 

In practice, the diagnoses obtained by this method appear, at any rate, 
for Milanese children, immune from many of the disturbances to which a 
mental age calculated in the usual way is liable ; in particular, they elimi- 
nate very largely the common confusion between the child who is mentally 
defective, and the child who, to a degree however grave, is merely backward 
educationally. 2 

Future Scales. 

In England, however, it is, I think, the opinion of most of those who 
have attempted to better the present condition of intelligence tests — it is 
certainly my own opinion — that all departures from the Binet-Simon scale 
should be either as small as possible, or else as complete as possible ; amend- 
ments should be either radical or minimal. If the Binet Simon scale is to 
be retained at all — and for immediate practical purposes, at any rate, it will 
be retained — then uniformity can be secured, and confusion avoided, only 
by returning for the time being to the exact procedure of Binet and Simon 
themselves. If it is to be revised — and in the interests of future efficiency 
it must be revised — then the modifications will need to be wholesale and 
drastic. The three revisions just described have no title to finality ; yet 

( 1 ) For an excellent discussion of the Point-Scale, with results obtained from English low-grade children, 
see E. 0. Lewis, "The Binet and Point-Scale Methods of Testing Intelligence," J.Exp. Fed., IV., March, 
1918 pp. 198-202. 

( 2 ) Those unable to read Italian will find an early account of the method in L' Annie Psvchologique 
XVIII., 1912, p. 327 : " L'Echelle MStriciue de ^Intelligence de Binet-Simon Modiflee selon la M£thode 
Treves-Saffiotti." A critical summary of Saffiotti's latest volume. La Misura dell' Intelligenza — a work too 
little noticed in this country — will be found in the Eugenics Review, VIII., i, 1917, pp. 365-373. 



74 

they adumbrate, however tentatively, the fitting lines for future study and 
research. They themselves, though sound emendations, are yet but partial 
emendations. The Point-Scale would have been far more effective, if it had 
incorporated the new tests of the Stanford Revision. The Stanford Revision 
would have been far more effective, if with the Point-Scale, it had ruth- 
lessly abandoned the weakest of the original tests. Both would have been 
more triumphant still, if they had pursued, explicitly and without flinching, 
the principle that each seems tacitly to have adopted in a fitful, fragmentary 
fashion — the principle which I have elsewhere termed the " internal grading " 
of the tests. 1 In the repetition of numbers, for instance, both versions 
complete Binet's series by adding sets of four and six. Terman, too, is 
equally thorough with tests of repeating numbers in a reversed order ; and, 
further, carries his vocabulary test through almost every age from VIII. to 
Superior Adult. Such repetitions of the same form of test with regular 
increments of difficulty, when marked according to the method of partial 
credits or points, the method expressly recognised by Yerkes, and occa- 
sionally employed by Terman, virtually provide us with separate scales for 
separate mental functions. 

Such separate scales we need, not for memory and vocabulary only, but 
also for all the fundamental capacities that are correlated closely with intelli- 
gence, yet remotely with each other — for perception both concrete and verbal, 
for delayed as well as for immediate memory, for attention both concentrated 
and sustained, for manual skill, for imagination, generalisation, judgment, 
reasoning, and the like. Such scales must be carried up through every age 
and stage, not merely to the thirteenth or fourteenth year with perhaps one 
or two maturer levels, but consistently through puberty, through adolescence, 
to the various grades exhibited by supernormal adults. In extracting from 
such scales a single measure for mental efficiency as a whole — for general 
intelligence, as it is currently termed — each test must be weighted, not equally 
or arbitrarily, but according to an empirical "regression coefficient " based 
upon its special correlation with intelligence itself. According to the same 
principles of graduation, tests of school subjects, although eliminated from 
the series of intelligence tests, will be separately compiled. 

Nor must the influence of sex, of social status, and of educational oppor- 
tunity be overlooked. Possibly, with tests of capacities more fundamental, 
the effect of acquired, as distinct from innate differences will be proportion- 
ately reduced. But there will remain the need for separate norms as well 
as for separate scales. 

Only by such a scale, or such a system of scales, can we diagnose general 
ability with scientific exactitude. But a scheme so elaborate will demand 
for its completion many years of co-operative research. Meanwhile, we may 
enquire what degree of validity appears to attach to the method which is 
the most obvious temporary substitute — the Binet-Simon Scale. To this 
problem the following memorandum will be devoted. 2 

t 1 ) See " The Measurement of Intelligence by the Binet-Simon Tests," loc. cit. inf., pp. 36, 150. 

( 2 ) I have attempted to analyse and evaluate in greater detail the general principles upon which the 
Binet-Simon scale is based in the Eugenics Review. VI., 1 and 2, April and July, 1914, pp. 36-50, 140-152 
(" The Measurement of Intelligence of the Binet-Simon Tests "). For this reason I have here largely refrained 
from entering into a theoretical discussion both of the fundamental nature of the scale and the fundamental 
nature of intelligence. 



APPENDIX I. 



List of Materials Needed for the Binet-Simon Tests. 

One of the chief merits of the psychological tests devised by Binet and 
Simon is the extreme simplicity of the apparatus required. Many of the 
tests, indeed, require no apparatus at all. Such materials as are needed for 
the rest can nearly all be home-made. For precise results they should be 
prepared in exact accordance with Binet's descriptions. The pictures needed 
will be found in the following Appendix. If these were not to hand, other 
pictures of simple scenes will serve for very rough purposes ; while the 
" pretty faces " and faces with " missing features " could be drawn from 
memory, or from the descriptions below. Many of the published repro- 
ductions of the latter, indeed, greatly differ from the originals {e.g., in Winch's 
examples the difference between the pretty and ugly faces is more excellently 
brought out ; while in those of Goddard they are not so distinct) ; and 
several investigators have used pictures of their own choice, usually more 
appropriate to children, and therefore easier to elicit " description " and 
"interpretation." Needless to say, very slight changes in the drawing of 
the pictures may make an appreciable difference in the final evaluations. 

The following is a list of the materials required for the entire scale. The 
figures in brackets indicate the index-number of the tests for which the 
apparatus is required (arabic numeral) and the age to which the tests are 
assigned (roman numeral) : — 

1. Coins : 13 pennies, 3 halfpennies, a farthing, sixpence, shilling, florin, 
half-crown, half-sovereign, and sovereign (or ten -shilling and pound 
notes). (III. 5 ; IV. 9 ; VI. 21, 25 ; VII. 33 ; VIII. 40.) 

2. 5 Weights : Boxes, similar in shape, colour, and size, each 1*5 X 2-5 X 
3-5 cm. (about f x 1 x If inches), weighing respectively 3, 6, 9, 12, 
and 15 grams (about 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5-tenths of an ounce, or, more exactly, 
46, 93, 139, 185, and 231 grains). Waistcoat-pocket matchboxes 
are about the correct size. They can be filled with cotton-wool, and 
shot (kept from rattling by melted candle-wax) until they weigh the 
correct amounts. (V. 19 ; X. 46.) 

3. Two plain cards the size of large ladies' visiting cards (6 cm. x 9 cm., 
or about 2 J x 3| inches). One card is blackened upon one side, and 
then cut diagonally into two similar right-angled triangles. (VI. 26 ; 
XV. 63.) 

4. A sheet of paper about 15 cm. (6 inches) square, folded in four like a 
letter ready for an envelope. In the middle of the edge, which presents 
but a single fold, a small triangular notch, about 1 cm. deep, is drawn. 
(XV. 61.) 

5. Pocket-knife and door-key of familiar pattern. (III. 5 ; V. 12.) Book, 
table, chair, and door arranged for errand. (V. 12.) 

75 



76 

6. Watch, showing seconds. (V. 17 ; VI. 24 ; VII. 33, 34 ; VIII. 38 ; 
IX. 42, 43 ; X. 46, 47, 48 ; XI. 49, 50, 51, 53 ; XII. 55.) 

7. Unruled paper, pen, ink. (V. 13 ; VI. 22, 23 ; VII. 35 ; IX. 47.) 
Pencil. (X. 48.) 

The following materials are given in the next Appendix ; they may- 
most conveniently be cut out and inserted into a small octavo pocket-book. 
For some purposes, however, stout cards are preferable, one for each item. 
Cards are more durable and easier for the child to hold ; and if several 
teachers are working together at the same time, the materials may be tem- 
porarily distributed according to the requirements of each. 

8. Reproductions of Binet's three engravings (Figure 9) : — 

i. (Figure 9 (a). ) A man and boy pulling a cart — loaded with 
table, bed, basket, saucepan, etc. — up a hill leading from a large 
town. 

ii. (Figure 9 (b). ) A man and woman seated upon a bench 
in a street, the woman clinging to the man who leans back limply, 
with head raised and eyes closed. 

hi. (Figure 9 (c). ) A man in a small bare room, standing on 
a bed, looking out of a small window. The typical characteristics 
of an English convict and prison-cell are absent. (III. 6 ; VI. 29, 
XII. 56.) 

9. Two parallel, horizontal, straight lines, 5 cm. and 6 cm. (2 inches and 2f 
inches) in length respectively, drawn in ink upon a card or sheet of 
paper, the longer placed about 3 cm. (1 inch) below the shorter, with its 
centre immediately beneath that of the other. (IV. 10.) (Figure 10.) 

10. Three pairs of women's faces, all looking toward the left. Of the first 
pair, that on the right is much uglier ; of the second, that on the left ; 
of the third, that on the right. (IV. 11.) (Figure 11.) 

11. A square for copying, each side measuring about 3 to 4 cm. (1J inches), 
drawn in ink. (V. 13.) (Figure 12.) 

12. Four oblong pieces of paper, 2x6 cm. (about % x 2J inches), coloured 
bright red, yellow, blue, and green, gummed beneath one another in 
that order. (V. 17.) (Figure 13.) 

13. A rhombus or diamond for copying, about 7 cm. (2| inches) long and 
4 cm. (1| inches) high, with sides 4 cm. (1| inches) long. (VI. 22.) 
(Figure 14.) 

14. " See little Paul " written, as a model for transcription, in the common, 
sloping, large copy-book style. (VI. 23.) (Figure 15.) 

15. Three faces with missing features ; the first, a man's, three-quarter 
face, with the mouth omitted ; the second, a woman's face in profile 
with the eye omitted, but the eyebrow drawn ; the third, a woman's 
face in profile with the nose omitted. On a separate page (or card), 
a full-length portrait of a woman with both arms omitted. (VII. 32.) 
(Figure 16.) 

16. A newspaper extract, describing a fire, and printed or typed for reading. 
(VIII. 36 and IX. 44.) (Figure 17.) 

17. Two designs to be drawn from memory, one a truncated pyramid, and 
the other a modified Greek-key pattern. (X. 48.) (Figure 18.) 



77 

18. Three sentences with the words disarranged. (XII. 55.) (Figure 19.) 

19. Six cards, or better still a small home-made book containing six leaves. 
Each card or leaf has drawn upon it, on one side only, a pair of lines, 
the two lines being side by side in the same horizontal straight line. 
The lengths of the lines are as follows : — 





1st 


line. 


2nd line. 


(a) 1st page . . 


. . 4 cm. 


(If in.) 


5 cm. (2 in.) 


(6) 2nd „ .. 


. . 5 cm. 


(2 in.) 


6 cm. (2f in.) 


(c) 3rd „ .. 


. . 6 cm. 


(2f in.) 


7 cm. (2| in.) 


(d) 4th „ .. 


. . 7 cm. 


(2* in.) 


7 cm. (2*. in.) 


(e) 5th „ .. 


. . 7 cm. 


(2| in.) 


7 cm. (2£ in.) 


(/) 6th „ . . 


. . 7 cm. 


(24 in.) 


7 cm. (2f in.) 



(XIII. 57) (Figure 20 (a) to (/).) 



The thickness of the line for this and other tests Binet nowhere specifies. 
The lines in the following figures are printed with four-to-pica (three 
point) rules, which are nominally 1-2 4th of an inch in breadth. 
The slight absorbency of the paper, and the slight overflowing of 
the ink, may render the lines, as actually printed, somewhat thicker. 
The line used in the test-materials of the Stanford Revision appears 
to be about 3-128ths of an inch ; that used in the test-materials 
for the Point Scale, about 6-128ths. For the test of memory-drawing, 
however, Yerkes appears to use a line which is about half as thick 
again. 



APPENDIX II. 



Pictures and other Materials for the Binet-Simon Tests. 

The test-materials here appended are taken from the illustrations, or 
reconstructed from the text, of the original French versions. To Dr. Simon 
I am heavily indebted for his generous permission to reproduce the drawings 
here. 

Some have perceived in them, or thought they perceived, a slight 
hastiness of choice or a slight crudity of design. Children are not so critical. 
It is true, the colour in Saffiotti's pictures quicken a greater interest ; the 
elegance of Winch's "pretty and ugly faces " appeal more to the artistic 
eye ; the solidity of line in Yerkes' memory-drawing test offer greater 
distinctness to the subject's apprehension. And all these variations may 
well be borne in mind by those who set themselves to construct new scales. 
But such changes not only reduce the difficulty, but also modify the nature, 
of the original task. Those who seek to preserve the wide range of com- 
parability given by the old scale will doubtless prefer, with me, to adhere 
with the greatest attainable exactitude to the French materials rather than 
to seek a superficial finish and insert refinements of their own. 

The illustrations are here printed, one on each page, and each on one 
side of the leaf only, with no other matter visible on that side. This is 
partly to avoid confusing the child, and partly to enable the examiner to 
cut out the essential test -materials, and transfer them, as before recom- 
mended, into a portable pocketbook. I hope it may shortly be possible to 
issue the entire set of materials both for the psychological and for the 
scholastic tests, bound with the necessary schedules and tables, in a 
separate and handier form. 



79 



80 



Figure 9 (a). 
AGES III., VI., and XI 

Tests 6, 29, and 56. 

(For instructions see pp. 26-27.) 



81 



(i). 




82 



Figure 9 (6). 
AGES III., VI., and XII 

Tests 6, 29, and 56 {continued). 
(For instructions see pp. 26-27.) 



83 



(ii).. 




84 



Figure 9 (c). 
AGES III., VI., and XII 

Tests 6, 29, and 56 {continued). 
(For instructions see pp. 26-27,) 



85 



(iii). 




86 



Figure 10. 
AGE IV. 

Test 10. Comparing Lines. 

(For the first attempt the figure is to be shown to the child with the 
lines horizontal and the smaller above the larger.) 

(For instructions see p. 29.) 



87 



88 



Figure 11 (a). 
AGE IV. 

Test 11. Comparing Faces. 

(For instructions see p. 30.) 



89 





90 



Figure 11 (6). 
AGE IV. 

Test 11. Comparing Faces (continued). 
{For instructions see p. 30.) 



91 





92 



Figure 11 (c). 
AGE IV. 

Test 11. Comparing Faces {continued). 
{For instructions see p. 30.) 



93 





r^ 



94 



Figure 12. 
AGE V. 

Test 13. Copying a Square. 

(For instructions see pp, 30-32.) 



95 



96 



Figure 13. 
AGE V. 

Test 17. Four Colours 

(For instructions see p. 34.) 



97 







H 



98 



Figure 14. 
AGE VI. 

Test 22. Copying Diamond. 

(The figure is to be shown to the child with the long axis vertical.) 
{For instructions see p. 36.) 



100 



Figure 15. 
AGE VI. 

Test 23. Transcription. 

(For instructions see p. 36.) 



101 







102 



Figure 16 (a). 
AGE VII. 

Test 32. Missing Features. 

(For instructions see pp. 43-44.) 



103 




104 



Figure 16 (6). 

* 

AGE VII. 

Test 32. Missing Features {continued). 
{For instructions see pp. 43-44.) 



105 




106 



Figure 16 (c). 
AGE VII. 

Test 32. Missing Features (continued). 
(For instructions see pp. 43-44.) 



107 




108 



Figure 16 (d). 
AGE VII. 

Test 32. Missing Features (continued). 
{For instructions see pp. 43-44.) 



109 




110 



Figure 17. 
AGES VIII. and IX. 

Tests 36 and 44. Reading and Reproduction. 

( For instructions see pp. 46-47.) 



Ill 



THREE HOUSES ON FIRE. 

London, 
September 5th. 

A big fire last night burnt down three 
houses in the middle of the city. 

Seventeen families have now no homes. 
The loss is more than 150,000 pounds. 

A young barber, who saved a baby in the 
cradle, was badly burnt about the hands. 



112 



Figure 18. 
AGE X. 

Test 48. Memory Drawing. 

(The figures are to be shown to the child with the truncated pyramid to 
the left, and the Greek key pattern to the right. But see p. 56.) 

(For instructions see pp. 53-56.) 



113 



d 



n 




114 



Figure 19. 
AGE XII. 

Test 55* Rearranging Mixed Sentences. 

(For instructions see p. 61). 



(i) 



(ii) 



(iii) 



115 



a defends 
master dog good 
bravely his. 



my asked paper 
the I teacher 
correct to. 



started the for 
morning early this 
we country. 



116 



Figure 20 (a) to (/). 
AGE XIII. 

Test 57. Suggestion. 

(For instructions see p. 62). 



117 






119 



1 



121 



r 



* 



123 






125 



127 



Memorandum II. 

THE THEORETICAL VALIDITY OF THE RESULTS. 



i. GENERAL SCOPE OF THE INVESTIGATION. 

The Problems Investigated. 

The preceding memorandum presented an exposition of the Binet- 
Simon tests in a form adapted for use with English children, and 
based upon a revised allocation of the various problems to the successive 
years of school life. That memorandum was concerned solely with the 
practical use of a practical scale ; and contained, therefore, no theoretical 
justification for the re-assignment of the ages, and no theoretical enquiry 
into the validity of the several tests themselves. The task of the present 
memorandum is to describe the results of an actual application of the tests, 
and to report in detail experiments and calculations, by which the assump'- 
tions embodied in the foregoing revision may be confuted or confirmed. 

The initial aim of the whole investigation was twofold : to standardise, 
by an application to English school children, both the methods and the 
results of the scale ; and to determine its diagnostic value, as thus applied 
and standardised. 

Such an aim involves four distinct problems. First, what changes in 
the actual procedure are necessitated by translating the French instructions 
and adjusting them for use in England ? Secondly, what averages in the 
final results are to be expected at each age from English school children, 
both normal and defective, and, more particularly, where is the borderline 
to be drawn between the two types ? Thirdly, how accurately do the tests, 
both severally and as a whole, measure the intelligence of normal and 
defective school children and discriminate between the two ? Lastly, what 
influence is exercised upon the performances, apart from age and intelligence, 
by various extraneous factors — by sex, by social status, by educational 
opportunity, and by emotional and moral disposition ? 

The first and more practical problem has already been dealt with in the 
preceding pages. The sections that follow will be successively concerned 
with the three remaining questions, questions which from their general nature 
are more abstract and obscure. 

Need for Statistical Analysis. 

The distribution of intelligence among the population, like the distribu- 
tion of income or the incidence of death, is a matter largely for statistics ; 
and in its general statistical framework the present enquiry must pursue 
much the same broad outlines as those adopted in my previous study of the 
distribution of educational ability. But as now my conclusions are addressed 
first of all to the practical worker, I may here dispense with a repetition at 
length of the methods there described ; and for details refer the enquiring 
theorist to that earlier work, 1 

For the statistical technicalities that still remain, some prefatory apology 

i 1 ) The Distribution and Relation of Educational Abilities, 1917. P. S. King and Son. 2s. 6d. 

k 129 



130 

is doubtless due. To those unfamiliar with the recent course of educational 
psychology the intrusion of mathematical refinements into problems of the 
classroom may seem to be little short of perverse pedantry, more ridiculous 
and less excusable than the crotchets of the trigonometrical tailor who fitted 
Gulliver with a suit of clothes by means of a sextant and a theodolite. 
Examining children, it may be urged, is among the simplest of the teacher's 
daily duties ; and needs little else but common sense and rule of thumb : 
by many words, still more by many figures, counsel is darkened. 

Such criticism has to be faced by each new application of a scientific 
technique to everyday affairs. To the builder and the gunner of a century 
ago the mathematical calculations of the modern engineer would seem the 
idle pastime of an arithmomaniac. To-day, before a new railway bridge 
can be designed or a new gun constructed, abstruse computations must be 
worked out, by the side of winch the statistics of psychology look childish 
and brief. The achievements justify the means. Designed in accordance 
with elaborate calculations, the suspension bridge spans straits, the canti- 
lever estuaries, which the old empirical arch and pier could never have 
crossed ; the 14-inch naval gun drops pro jectiles," of a weight, at a range, and 
with an accuracy, some twenty times as great as that achieved by primitive 
wrought-iron, smooth-bore ordnance. "While Swift was gibing at the mathe- 
maticians of Laputa, Newton was writing his Principia. The satirist may 
be read the more widely : but the mathematician has more profoundly 
changed and furthered the course of civilisation. 

It has been the signal merit of the English school of psychology, from 
Sir Francis Galton onwards, that it has, by this very device of mathematical 
analysis, transformed the mental test from a discredited dodge of the 
charlatan into a recognised instrument of scientific precision. To the dis- 
regard of statistical procedure may be traced the gross divergences of 
standard among those who diagnose deficiency in children ; to the in- 
adequacy of Binet's own arithmetical formulations may be attributed at 
once the popularity and the confusion that have attended his diagnostic 
scale. Every subsequent search for an equitable test of mental deficiency, 
every recent endeavour to construct a scale of intelligence, whether adapted 
from Binet or framed afresh, has necessarily been based upon one or more 
of the statistical methods that re-emerge in the following discussion. Ex- 
perience has shown that the practical efficiency of each new scheme varies 
almost in direct proportion to the thoroughness of its theoretical foundations* 

Version Employed. 

The version of the tests with which the following results were obtained 
differs in no important particular from that detailed in the preceding memo- 
randum. The initial translation was undertaken for an enquiry commenced 
in 1912 in collaboration with Mr. R. C. Moore and other research students 
in the Psychological Laboratory at Liverpool University. The material then 
gathered demonstrated the need for a carefully rectified procedure. The 
task of revision was accordingly resumed in London, with the assistance of 
numerous teachers and others, as already recounted. With the scale so 
revised the present data were secured. More recent emendations have been 
too trivial to affect the general outcome. 
• 
Number and Nature of the Children Tested. 

The results here reported are those derived from London children only. 
The children tested in London schools number over three thousand five 
hundred ; and comprise, first, 2,674 " normal " children, attending fifteen. 



131 

different departments in the ordinary elementary schools ; secondly, 729 
attending seven special schools for the mentally deficient ; thirdly, 107 
juvenile delinquents from remand homes, industrial schools, and elsewhere. 

Of the elementary schools, eleven departments were examined by 
me personally, two by the head teacher, one by the teacher from a 
neighbouring special school, and one by the several class-teachers. In 
the latter school each teacher was supplied with a typed copy of instruc- 
tions and with the requisite apparatus ; and the procedure was first 
thoroughly demonstrated and discussed. Where the marking is somewhat 
arbitrary, as in the drawing and the definition tests, the scripts obtained 
from the children were preserved, and the scores checked personally. The 
data thus contributed by the generous co-operation of teachers comprises 
about one-third of the whole amount. Owing to the wide variation displayed 
by social conditions in London, the inclusion of samples from schools of 
very different types was deemed imperative. In many cases, however, it 
proved unnecessary or impossible to test certain of the elementary schools 
throughout. 

Of the special schools, all except two were examined personally. In 
those two the tests were conducted by the head teachers. The children 
aged six and seven actually attending such schools are relatively small in 
number. I have, therefore, incorporated results secured from children not 
actually attending special schools at the time of examination, but subse- 
quently transferred thither on the ground of mental deficiency. 1 



2. THE ORDER OF DIFFICULTY OF THE TESTS; AND 
THEIR ALLOCATION TO APPROPRIATE AGES. 

Percentages Passing the Tests at Each Age. 

The total results obtained are summarised in Tables III. and IV. These 
tables present, for ordinary elementary and special M.D. schools respectively, 
the percentage of the children in each age-group passing each of the tests. 
The age-groups are distinguished by age last birthday. In each, therefore, 
the average chronological age is 3J, 4f, 5J. . . ., not 3-0, 4-0, 5-0. . . ., as in 
the age-groups of many previous investigators. 

Before calculating the figures for normal children (Table III.) the per- 
centages found at each school were weighted in accordance with its repre- 
sentative character. The schools examined were first disposed into five 
classes — poor, below average, average, above average, and good. The 
criteria for this classification were partly social, for example, the economic 
position of the parents, and partly educational, for example, the rela- 
tive number of scholarships gained annually. All the schools in a typical 
London borough — the borough previously chosen for my survey of educa- 
tional abilities — were then similarly classified ; and thus a rough estimate 
was procured for the relative frequency of pupils of each type. The original 
percentages were then loaded proportionately by multiplying them through- 
out each school by the figure denoting the frequency of its type within the 
borough. So computed, the averages yield a more accurate picture of a 
random sample of London children than any results derived by examining 
merely a single school, however typical, or by simply averaging all schools 
regardless of their divergent character. Measured, for example, by the 
standard deviation, the general distribution of ability would, in the latter 
case, appear too widely scattered ; in the former, too compact. 

t 1 ) For the facilities aDd the assistance thus given I must repeat my acknowledgments to the head and 
assistant teachers of the various schools where the experiments have been carried out. 



132 



TABLE III.— ORDINARY 

Number of Children at Each 



Order for 


Test. 




Normals. 




1 










3 


4 


5 


6 




Age III. 










1 


Pointing 


84-7 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


2 


2 Numbers 


82-6 


98-9 


100-0 


100-0 


3 


Sex 


75-3 


93-3 


100-0 


100-0 


4 


Surname 


73-5 


94-8 


99-4 


100-0 


5 


Naming 


69-0 


91-2 


99-4 


100-0 


6 


Picture (Enumeration) 
Age IV. 


65-6 


87-7 


98-7 


99-6 


7 


6 Syllables 


58-2 


88-5 


96-6 


99-3 


8 


3 Numbers . . 


45-3 


83-2 


95-8 


99-3 


9 


4 Pennies 


34-8 


82-4 


97-4 


99-4 


10 


2 Lines 


45-7 


72-7 


94-3 


98-7 


11 


Comparing Faces 
Age V. 


33-2 


66-9 


91-3 


98-7 


12 


Triple Order 


26-4 


65-3 . 


84-2 


96-7 


13 


Square 


11-5 


70-3 


85-4 


97-6 


14 


10 Syllables 


17-6 


50-8 


81-8 


97-7 


15 


Age 


18-0 


54-5 


78-7 


96-0 


16 


Morning and Afternoon 


13-5 


51-9 


79-6 


96-7 


17 


4 Colours 


11-9 


48-6 


76-0 


95-2 


18 


4 Numbers 


12-9 


45-2 


72-3 


94-8 


19 


2 Weights 
Age VI. 


3-6 


37-6 


68-3 


85-8 


20 


Fingers 


0-0 


28-4 


62-5 


86-6 


21 


13 Pennies 


0-6 


32-1 


51-6 


85-8 


22 


Diamond 


0-6 


11-7 


49-8 


83-8 


23 


Transcription 


0-0 


10-5 


45-2 


85-0 


24 


Days of Week 


0-0 


17-2 


44-2 


81-3 


25 


4 Coins 


0-0 


8-0 


48-8 


82-8 


26 


Divided Card 


1-2 


19-8 


47-2 


80-8 


27 


Definition (Use) 


0-6 


21-1 


46-2 


72-3 


28 


5 Numbers 


1-2 


15-2 


37-3 


75-7 


29 


Picture (Description) 


1-2 


16-8 


49-8 


73-5 


30 


16 Syllables 


0-6 


14-6 


47-8 


72-7 


31 


Eight and Left 
Age VTI. 


0-6 


11-4 


52-0 


75-7 


32 


Missing Features 


0-0 


9-5 


34-0 


65-3 


33 


Pence and Halfpence 


0-0 


1-3 


18-9 


41-8 


34 


Differences (Concrete) 


0-0 


2-5 


28-3 


52-0 


35 


Dictation 

Age VIII. 


0-0 


0-0 


7-2 


45-1 


36 


Reading (2 Facts) 


0-0 


o-o 


3-9 


23-2 


37 


Easy Questions 


0-0 


0-6 


9-6 


31-2 


38 


Counting 20 to 1 


0-0 


0-0 


5-7 


28-0 


39 


Date 


0-0 


0-0 


1-3 


9-6 


40 


Change 


0-0 


0-0 


0-0 


10-9 


41 


6 Numbers 
Age IX. 


0-0 


0-0 


4-9 


14-5 


42 


Months 


0-0 


0-0 


1-3 


7-0 


43 


9 Coins 


o-o 


0-0 


1-3 


9-9 


44 


Reading (6 Facts) 


0-0 


0-0 


0-0 


3-8 


45 


Definition (Class) 
Age X. 


o-o 


1-3 


3-9 


16-4 


46 


5 Weights 


o-o 


0-0 


2-6 


14-3 


47 


Sentence Building (2) 


0-0 


0-0 


0-0 


5-3 


48 


Memory Drawing 
Age XI. 


o-o 


0-0 


0-0 


2-4 


49 


Absurdities 


o-o 


0-0 


0-0 


0-6 


50 


Difficult Questions 


o-o 


0-0 


0-0 


1-9 


51 


60 Words 


0-0 


0-0 


o-o 


4-1 


52 


7 Numbers 


0-0 


o-o 


o-o 


2-5 


53 


Sentence Building (1) 
Age XII. 


o-o 


0-0 


o-o 


0-6 


54 


3 Rhymes 


0-0 


0-0 


0-0 


0-0 


55 


Mixed Sentences 


o-o 


0-0 


o-o 


0-0 


56 


Picture (Interpretation) 
Age XIII. 


o-o 


0-0 


1-3 


2-5 


57 


Suggestion 


0-0 


0-0 


1-3 


5-3 


58 


Problems 

Age XIV. 


0-0 


o-o 


0-0 


0-6 


59 


26 Syllables 


0-0 


o-o 


0-0 


0-0 


60 


Definition (Abstract) 
Age XV. 


0-0 


0-0 


o-o 


o-o 


61 


Folded Paper 


0-0 


o-o 


0-0 


0-0 


62 


Differences (Abstract) 


0-0 


0-0 


o-o 


0-0 


63 


Reversed Triangle 
Age XVI. 


0-0 


0-0 


o-o 


0-0 


64 


Re-statement 


0-0 


o-o 


o-o 


0-0 


65 


Difference (King, President) 


0-0 


o-n 


0-0 


n-n 



ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS. 

Age Passing the Several Tests. 



133 





Age. 






























Average. 


7 


8 


9 


10 


11 


12 


13 


14 




100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


98-7 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


98-5 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


97-4 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


97-3 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


96-6 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


96-0 


99-2 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


95-1 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


93-6 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


92-8 


99-2 


99-6 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


92-5 


99-0 


99-2 


99-6 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


90-7 


98-4 


99-2 


99-6 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


89-1 


98-2 


99-2 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


88-5 


99-6 


99-2 


99-6 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


87-2 


97-3 


99-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


87-0 


97-8 


98-9 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


86-5 


97-8 


98-6 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


85-7 


96-1 


98-9 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


85-0 


92-2 


96-4 


99-1 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


82-0 


95-3 


98-6 


99-3 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


80-9 


96-6 


99-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


80-5 


95-6 


97-6 


98-3 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


78-1 


94-8 


99-0 


99-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


77-8 


93-9 


95-6 


97-6 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


77-5 


94-0 


97-2 


97-6 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


77-4 


86-2 


92-2 


96-0 


98-5 


99-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


76-7 


87-2 


94-2 


97-1 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


76-6 


94-0 


95-6 


98-8 


99-5 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


76-4 


84-7 


93-6 


96-8 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


76-4 


85-3 


95-2 


98-6 


97-3 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


76-0 


83-8 


90-1 


97-1 


99-8 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


75-9 


87-3 


95-6 


98-6 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


74-2 


80-5 


90-4 


96-8 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


69-1 


70-6 


80-0 


92-9 


99-1 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


68-8 


67-3 


87-2 


94-5 


99-1 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


66-7 


58-2 


82-1 


90-5 


99-2 


99-6 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


63-1 


51-7 


76-5 


89-3 


95-4 


99-3 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


62-8 


53-6 


76-0 


86-1 


96-0 


98-3 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


62-0 


36-4 


71-4 


83-9 


93-5 


97-6 


99-2 


99-4 


98-4 


57-6 


39-1 


6S-2 


79-3 


95-4 


97-3 


98-4 


100-0 


100-0 


57-4 


42-5 


60-2 


78-2 


88-5 


96-6 


98-5 


99-5 


100-0 


56-9 


35-3 


61-6 


78-6 


93-5 


98-3 


100-0 


100-0 


100-0 


56-3 


33-3 


57-2 


76-0 


85-8 


95-4 


97-7 


98-8 


100-0 


54-6 


19-3 


44-5 


68-4 


80-2 


89-3 


95-7 


98-1 


99-1 


49-9 


23-6 


40-4 


63-8 


77-0 


86-6 


87-0 


93-5 


94-1 


49-0 


21-0 


36-1 


53-5 


71-9 


81-4 


87-4 


95-0 


96-4 


46-6 


14-7 


34-4 


46-3 


69-3 


84-3 


91-3 


98-0 


98-3 


45-2 


9-S 


28-9 


45-7 


62-0 


76-9 


81-1 


94-5 


95-4 


41-4 


5-2 


24-a 


29-3 


49-2 


70-3 


79-2 


96-3 


97-5 


37-7 


6-3 


13-1 


28-2 


48-6 


64-6 


76-5 


92-5 


95-0 


35-6 


7-6 


21-6 


27-0 


43-6 


60-4 


74-3 


8S-8 


92-1 


35-0 


5-8 


18-8 


25-5 


44-6 


59-4 


68-9 


80-3 


92-3 


33-2 


3-1 


16-5 


20-4 


43-0 


58-1 


68-7 


81-5 


89-2 


31-8 


3-4 


20 : 2 


26-6 


37-3 


52-0 


66-4 


79-3 


87-7 


31-1 


0-9 


15-3 


21-4 


40-1 


55-1 


69-5 


76-3 


83-8 


30-2 


4-6 


11-2 


16-6 


36-7 


47-5 


71-7 


81-5 


82-1 


29-6 


6-9 


23-6 


31-4 


40-1 


43-1 


56-2 


68-0 


71-4 


28-9 


0-9 


2-2 


6-7 


19-6 


28-0 


42-8 


62-5 


69-1 


19-4 


1-8 


4-3 


9-7 


17-4 


22-0 


34-1 


51-0 


62-3 


16-9 


0-0 


1-1 


2-6 


8-7 


19-6 


30-5 


55-8 


70-5 


15-7 


0-0 


0-0 


0-0 


1-4 


6-6 


14-7 


31-7 


42-1 


8-0 


0-0 


0-0 


0-0 


2-6 


3-4 


11-4 


23-7 


45-4 


7-2 


0-0 


0-0 


0-0 


0-7 


4-1 


12-7 


20-2 


41-3 


6-6 


0-0 


0-0 


0-0 


1-4 


3-4 


7-3 


16-2 


29-2 


4-S 


0-0 


0-0 


0-0 


0-0 


2-3 


3-6 


10-3 


24-6 


3-4 



134 

Order of Difficulty of the Tests for Normals. 

In graduating such a series of tests as this, two conditions must be 
obeyed. First, the tests, marking as they do successive points upon the 
scale, should follow one another in a fixed order of increasing difficulty. 
Secondly, the increase in difficulty should always be the same in amount : 
the intervals between each successive pair of tests, constituting as they do 
equivalent units of measurement, must represent equal increments of ability. 
Each step on the ladder must be a step upwards — and that for every climber ; 
and the spaces between the rungs must be of even distance. How far does 
the present arrangement conform to this double stipulation ? In Table 
III. the percentages show the difference in ease with which each test is passed 
by normal children ; the ranking based upon these percentages will give 
the order of difficulty. Is the order inflexible ? Are the intervals equal ? 

The Stability of the Order of the Tests. 

The tests are arranged in sequence ; and the sequence has been deduced 
by comparing the averages 1 of all the percentages in each of the several age- 
groups. The averages are shown in the last column of the table. One 
source of instability is immediately obvious. Within the age-groups, taken 
one by one, the general decline in the percentages 2 is interrupted here and 
there by a momentary rise. The orders for separate years would agree 
neither with each other, nor with the average. These sporadic reversals 
are generally caused by tests learnt suddenly at a definite epoch in the child's 
school life — for example, transcription, reading, and date. At the age of 
three, to draw a square is harder than to give one's age, to name the colours, 
to distinguish morning and afternoon, to repeat ten syllables, or to echo four 
numbers. At the age of four, it becomes easier than these others ; and, in 
later years, it is performed even more readily than the triple order. By some 
investigators it has been alleged that " those tests are most useful which 
show the steepest rise in the number passing it from age to age." 3 The steep 
rise, however, means, in most instances, simply that the task embodied in 
the test is not taught to the child until he reaches a given school standard. 
Success in such tests is the consequence and guarantee, not of mental maturity, 
but of school promotion. 

On the whole, however, the inconsistencies between one age and another 
are neither frequent nor large. A more fertile and far-reaching question 
lies, I think, in this : How far does the new order agree with the original order 
prescribed by Binet, and with the revised orders proposed by subsequent 
investigatiors ? 

Between the arrangement presented by Table III. and the various 
arrangements which Binet published the correspondence is far from exact. 
To test the agreement more minutely, I have worked out the correlation 
between the various orders. The seriation obtained with London children 
correlates with Binet's 1908 arrangement to the extent of -957, with Binet's 
1911 arrangement to the extent of -977, and with the order derived from 
Binet's own experimental data to the extent of -964. 4 If, therefore, the 
present results may be accepted as a criterion, the revised arrangement of 
1911 is a distinct improvement upon that of 1908. This conclusion is 
enforced by the correspondence that obtains between the present arrange - 

t 1 ) Obtained by averaging the horizontal rows of Table m. 

( 2 ) Observable by glancing down the vertical columns of Table in. 

( 3 ) W. Stern, Die Psychologischen Methoden der Intelligenzprufung, 1912, p. 65. This criterion was first 
suggested by Bobertag, and has been accepted by Moore (loc. cit. inf., p. 124) ; Moore's list of such tests, 
however, includes a large number that plainly depend upon school instruction. 

( 4 ) The probable errors are approximately ±"015. 



135 



TABLE IV.-SPECIAL M.D. SCHOOLS. 

Number of Children at Each Age Passing the Several Tests. 



Order 








for 




Age last Birthday. 


Aver- 


Defec- 


Test. 




age. 


tives. 




6 


7 


8 


9 


10 


11 


12 


13 


14 


1 


Pointing 


96-9 


96-4 


97-1 


98-8 


100 


100 


100 


100 


100 


98-8 


2 


Surname 


93 


7 


96 


4 


97 


1 


97 


5 


9S-3 


100 


100 


100 


100 


98- 


1 


3 


Sex 


87 


5 


98 


2 


97 


1 


98 


8 


100 


100 


100 


100 


100 


98- 





4 


Naming 


ST 


5 


98 


2 


98 


6 


98 


8 


98-3 


100 


100 


100 


100 


97- 


9 


5 


2 Numbers 


78 


1 


94 


5 


95 


7 


97 


5[ 100 


100 


100 


100 


100 


96- 


2 


6 


Picture (Enumeration) . . 


81 


2 


92 


7 


94 


••> 


913 


3197-4 


99 


2 


100 


100 


100 


95- 


7 


7 


4 Pennies 


71 


9 


83 


6 


94 


2 


95 


197-4 


99 


2 


100 


100 


100 


93 


5 


8 


3 Numbers 


68 


7 


87 


3 


92 


8 


93 


8 


96-5 


99 


2 


99-1 


100 


100 


93 





9 


2 Lines 


65 


6 


85 


2 


94 


2 


96 


3 


96-5 


99 


2 


100 


100 


100 


93 





10 


Square 


56 


2 


74 


5 


91 


3 


92 


6 


97-4 


98 


3 


99 


1 


100 


100 


89 


9 


11 


Comparing Faces 


46 


9 


78 


2 


88 


4 


88 


9 


91-3 


98 


3 


97 


1 


98-9 


100 


87 


6 


12 


6 Syllables 


37 


5 


69 


1 


92 


8 


93 


8 


95-6 


99 


2 


99 


1 


100 


100 


87 


5 


13 


Morning and Afternoon 


40 


6 


72 


7 


82 


6 


S3 


9 


89-4 


96 


3 


90 


1 


97-9 


100 


84 


7 


14 


Age 


31 


2 


03 


6 


84 


1 


SS 


9 


95-6 


97 


2 


97 


1 


97 


9 


100 


84 





15 


4 Colours 


37 


5 


67 


3 


75 


4 


86 


4 


93-0 


98 


3 


97 


1 


1( 


(0 


100 


83 


9 


16 


Triple Order 


34 


4 


70 


9 


81 


2 


83 


9 


89-4 


97 


2 


96 


2 


96 


8 


100 


83 


3 


17 


10 Syllables 


21 


9 


56 


4 


84 


1 


82 


7 


92-1 


97 


2 


96 


2 


97 


9 


100 


80 


9 


18 


Fingers 


25 





45 


5 


72 


5 


82 


7 


90-3 


97 


2 


98 


1 


98 


9 


100 


78 


9 


19 


13 Pennies 


21 


9 


40 





69 


6 


83 


9 


90-3 


98 


3 


98 


1 


97 


9 


100 


77 


8 


20 


Definition (Use) 


9 


4 


52 


7 


66 


7 


77 


8 


85-8 


86 


1 


91 


4 


95 


8 


98-0 


73 


7 


21 


Picture (Description) 


18 


7 


47 


3 


62 


3 


65 


4 


86-7 


90 


8 


90 


5 


94 


7 


96-0 


72 


5 


22 


2 Weights 


15 


6 


32 


7 


59 


4 


75 


3 


87-7 


91 


7 


93 


3 


94 


7 


98-0 


72 





23 


4 Numbers 


12 


5 


30 


9 


56 


5 


72 


8 


84-9 


95 


4 


94 


3 


97 


9 


100 


71 


7 


24 


4 Coins 


12 


5 


25 


5 


53 


6 


70 


4 


83-2 


93 


5 


98 


1 


98 


9 


100 


70 


6 


25 


Transcription 


3 


1 


23 


6 


52 


2 


67 


9 


84-9 


94 


4 


95 


2 


96 


8 


100 


68 


7 


26 


Right and Left 


9 


4 


38 


2 


56 


5 


59 


3 


78-8 


85 


2 


94 


3 


95 


8 


96-0 


68 


2 


27 


Days of Week 


3 


1 


27 


3 


55 


1 


63 





77-0 


87 





95 


2 


98 


9 


100 


67 


4 


28 


Diamond 


3 


1 


36 


4 


47 


8 


61 


7 


74-3 


88 


9 


96 


2 


96 


8 


100 


67 


2 


29 


Divided Card 


6 


2 


21 


8 


44 


9 


57 


9 


69-0 


83 


3 


88 


6 


92 


6 


100 


62 


7 


30 


Easy Questions 


3 


1 


9 


1 


24 


8 


46 


9 


60-2 


73 


2 


81 


9 


93 


7 


96-0 


54 


3 


31 


5 Numbers 


3 


1 


12 


7 


37 


7 


47 


8 


61-1 


67 


6 


74 


3 


S3 





96 





53 


7 


32 


Pence and Halfpence 








1 


8 


24 


6 


33 


3 


56-6 


78 


7 


89 


5 


94 


7 


96 





52 


8 


33 


Missing Features 








5 


5 


27 


5 


36 


9 


64-6 


77 


S 


80 





88 


3 


94 


1 


52 


7 


34 


16 Syllables 








7 


3 


26 


1 


39 


1 


50-4 


60 


2 


66 


7 


84 





96 





47 


7 


35 


Differences (Concrete) . . 








1 


8 


21 


7 


36 


2 


51-3 


61 


1 


71 


4 


80 


8 


82 


3 


45 


2 


36 


9 Coins 








3 


6 


8 


7 


23 


2 


25-7 


57 


4 


76 


2 


84 





92 





41 


3 


37 


Months 














1 


4 


17 


3 


29-2 


45 


4 


70 


5 


80 


8 


84 


3 


36- 


5 


38 


Date 














4 


3 


IS 


5 


32-7 


48 


1 


55 


2 


71 


3 


74 


5 


33- 


8 


39 


Change 














1 


4 


8 


6 


34-5 


44 


5 


63 


8 


71 


3 


80 


4 


33- 


8 


40 


Counting 20 to 1 . . 














5 


8 


16 





25-7 


46 


3 


55 


2 


61 


7 


64 


7 


30- 


6 


41 


6 Numbers 














5 


8 


12 


4 


23-0 


34 


3 


43 


8 


58 


5 


68 


8 


27- 


4 


42 


Reading (2 Facts) 




















4 


9 


9-7 


23 


2 


36 





44 


7 


49 





IS- 


6 


43 


Dictation 




















3 


7 


8-9 


21 


3 


31 


4 


-11 


5 


56 


9 


18- 


2 


44 


5 Weights 

















9 


6 


2 


17-7 


25 





30 


5 


37 





41 


2 


17- 


6 


45 


Suggestion 














4 


3 


9 


9 


12-4 


16 


7 


33 


3 


34 





43 


2 


17- 


1 


46 


Sentence Building (2) 




















3 


4 


9-7 


13 


9 


17 


1 


29 


8 


33 


4 


11 


9 


47 


Picture (Interpretation) 














1 


4 


4 


9 


15-0 


15 


7 


20 





23 


4 


25 


5 


11 


8 


48 


Memory Drawing 




















1 


2 


6-2 


13 





23 


8 


27 


7 


31 


4 


11 


5 


49 


Definition (Class) 














2 


4 


4 


9 


8-9 


14 


8 


17 


1 


20 


2 


23 


6 


10 


2 


50 


Reading (6 Facts) 


























2-6 


8 


3 


13 


3 


26 


6 


35 


3 


9 


6 


51 


Absurdities 




















2 


5 


3-5 


7 


4 


11 


4 


16 





19 


6 


6 


7 


52 


60 Words 




















1 


2 


9-7 


5 


6 


6 


7 


8 


5 


9 


8 


4 


6 


53 


7 Numbers 


























1-8 


2 


8 


7 


6 


12 


8 


15 


7 


4 


5 


54 


Difficult Questions 




















2 


5 


2-6 


6 


5 


7 


6 


9 


6 


11 


8 


4 


5 


55 


Sentence Building (1) 


























0-9 


1 


9 


5 


7 


10 


6 


11 


8 


3 


4 


56 


Problems 


























0-9 





9 


2 


9 


3 


2 


3 


9 


1 


3 


57 


3 Rhymes 


























0-0 








1 


9 


2 


1 


5 


9 


1 


1 


58 


Mixed Sentences 


























0-0 








1 


9 


1 


1 


3 


9 





8 


59 


26 Syllables 


0-0 


0-0 0-0 


0-0 


0-9 


0-0 





9 


2 


1 


2 





0-7 



136 

ment and that derived from Binet's own experiments, a correspondence 
closer than that subsisting between Binet's experiments and either of Binet's 
formal arrangements. 

To collate the present order with the orders given by other investigators, 
and to compare each of these orders in turn amongst themselves, should 
yield an exquisite test of the stability of the scale. Which form of sequence 
accords most closely with all the rest ? In answer to this question, the correla- 
tions may be computed between the orders to be extracted from the per- 
centage tables recorded in the published articles. Ten such tables are 
accessible, compiled by various authors, working in various countries. 1 

Data for tests common to both the 1908 and the 1911 series alone 
are to be admitted ; and, further, tests for years III., IV., and V. have to be 
discarded, since scarcely any writers have employed them. These restrictions 
leave thirty- two tests available. The correlations have been calculated by 
the familiar method of squaring the rank-differences. The probable errors 
range from ±-076 for the lowest coefficient (-625) to ±-003 for the highest 
(•986). 

The coefficients are shown, arranged as a " hierarchy," in Table V. 
The hierarchical system strongly suggests a single " central factor," under- 
lying, and in different proportions determining, all the various reconstruc- 
tions. That " central factor " is presumably the ideal order — an order 
such as would be reached by applying Binet's own procedure to an indefinitely 
large sample, tested by an indefinitely large number of investigators, in an 
indefinitely large variety of countries. 

The average correlation for the whole table is only -873, no high figure 
for such a comparison as this. Among the several investigators the lowest 
average is that given by Wallin's order. This was based upon results 
from epileptics. His highest correlations are with the other American 
investigators. Saffiotti's order, obtained with Italian subjects, and Bober- 
tag's, obtained with German, follow in succession. Hinckley, Schmitt, Ter- 
man and Childs, four American investigators, present somewhat larger 
averages ; Moore and Taylor, two English investigators, averages still 
larger. The next three furnish averages over *900. Between them there is 
little to choose. Binet's own order naturally occupies a high position, since 
upon his work that of all others is founded. Goddard's, however, rises higher 
still. His order is extremely close to Binet's ; and also correlates with that 

( x ) Comparatively few of the earlier tables are given in a form which enables the order of difficulty to 
be determined precisely. The following are the sources of the arrangements referred to above. Even here 
the data had occasionally to be re-cast into a comparable form, e.g., by assuming that tests not applied to 
certain children would have been passed by all or by none at certain ages. Sometimes the figures have had 
to be recovered from graphs printed with a scale that is not always clear. 

A. Binet, " La Mesure du Niveau Intellectuel." L' Annie Psych., XVII.. 1911. p. 150, Tableau II. 
H. H. Goddard, " Two Thousand Normal Children measured by the Binet Scale." Ped. Sem., XVIII., 

1911, pp. 237-8, Table II. 
O. Bobertag, " Uber Intelligenzpriifungen (nach der Methode von B. und S.)." Z. Angew. Psych., V., 

1911, pp. 105 sea. (Percentages passim, buc incomplete). Cf. 'ibid.. VI. 1912, pp. 495 seq. 
F. TJ. Samotti, La Misura dell' Intelligenza nei Fanciulli, 1916, p. 155, Tavola XXIII. 
J. E. Wallin. Experimental Studies of Mental Defectives, 1912, p. 32, Table IV. 

It. M. Terman and S. M. Childs, " A Tentative Revision of the Binet-Simon Measuring Scale of Intelli- 
gence." J. Educational Psych., III., 1912. Pp. 72-3, Table IV. 
A. C. Hinckley. " The Binet Tests Applied to Individuals over Twelve Years of Age." J. Educ. Psych. 

VI., 1915, p. 56, Pig. 26. 
C. Schmitt, " Standardisation of Tests for Defective Children." Psych. Monograph, XIX., 1915, Tables 

I. to VII.. pp. 70-77. 
N. G. Taylor, " Further Data towards the Study of the Binet-Simon Scale." J. Exp. Ped., III., 1916, 

P. 25. 
E. C. Moore. " The Application of the Binet-Simon Scale to Normal English Children." J. Exp. Fed., 

IV., 1917. pp. 121-123, Figure 5 



137 

of the American investigators somewhat more closely than Binet's own ; 
in all likelihood the vast number of observations from which his figures are 
drawn has imparted a high reliability. The order furnished by the present 
investigation yields an average coefficient higher even than Goddard's ; but 
this perhaps is mainly to be referred to its large correlations with other 
English investigations and with the Continental. With the American 
investigations its correlations are often exceeded in other columns. That 
they appear throughout as large as they do is doubtless owing, first, to the 
reversion to Binet's original procedure — a procedure from which all the 
other enquiries started ; and, secondly, to the large numbers of children 
tested — a feature by which disturbances from accidental error is inevitably 
lessened. 



TABLE V. 

Correlations between the Orders of Difficulty found for the Tests 
by Various Investigators. 





3 

pq 


IS 
o 
O 


1 
pq 


o 
H 


a 

o 
S 


§2 
S3 


m 


3 

o 

.a 

M 


CD 

.a 

o 

n 


o 

m 

m 




to 

Fh 

p- 


Burt 

Goddard 

Binet 

Taylor 

Moore 

Terman and Childs 

Schmitt 

Hinckley 

Bobertag 

Saffiotti 

Wallin 


•938 
•942 
•975 
•985 
•927 
•921 
•892 
•909 
•925 
•719 


•938 

•986 
•928 
■928 
•925 
•895 
•923 
•911 
•862 
•775 


•942 
•986 

•931 
•923 
•914 
•911 
•909 
•924 
•863 
•756 


•975 
•928 
•931 

•964 
•900 
•933 
•867 
•878 
•915 
•690 


•985 
•928 
•923 
•964 

•912 
•906 
•875 
•899 
•911 
•667 


•927 
•925 
•914 
•900 
■912 

•867 
■934 
•870 
•839 
•804 


•921 
■895 
•911 
•933 
•906 
•867 

•853 

•846 

•872 
•782 


•892 
•923 
•909 
•867 
•875 
•934 
•853 

•847 
•796 
•833 


•909 
•911 
•924 
•878 
•899 
•870 
■846 
•847 

•888 
•651 


•925 
•862 
•863 
•915 
•911 
•839 
•872 
•796 

•888 

. 

•625 


•719 

•775 
•756 
•690 
•667 
•804 
•782 
•833 
•651 
■625 


•913 

•907 
•906 
■898 
•897 
•889 
•879 
•873 
•862 
•850 
•730 


Grand Average . . 
























•873 



For comparability with other orders, therefore, the present arrangement is 
at least as satisfactory as any other, probably more satisfactory than Binet's, 
and quite possibly the most satisfactory of all those here examined. The orders 
compared, however, are confined to scales entitled to represent the Binet- 
Simon scale as Binet and Simon intended it. The most thorough and most 
recent revisions — the versions of Yerkes and of Terman — diverge too far 
from the original to be admissible for strict comparison. Had they been 
published long enough for verification over the same extent as the original 
schemes of Binet and Simon, I have little doubt that they might have proved 
more stable than either the present arrangement or any other ; only they 
can hardly profess to be Binet-Simon scales. 

With these reservations, then, we may regard the tests, thus rearranged 
in order of difficulty, as marking points, fairly definite and moderately 
steady, along a linear scale. But stability is not enough. The gradation 
must be regular as well as rigid. The distances between each pair of adjacent 
points must everywhere be equal. Otherwise to measure intelligence by 
the number of tests passed would be a proceeding void of all validity. Units 
are not units unless each has the same size. 



138 

The Equality of the Intervals of the Tests. 

The intervals between the tests can best be measured in terms of the 
standard deviations 1 for the several years. Conceive a series of tests passed 
respectively by 50-0, 69-1, 84-1, 93-3, 97-7.... per cent, of a given age- 
group. With these frequencies, as a table of the probability integral will 
show, the several tests would, in a normal distribution, fall beyond the 
average degree of difficulty by 0, \, 1, \\, 2. . . . times the standard devia- 
tion. The differences in difficulty between the successive tests are thus 
equal, although between the successive percentages the differences — 19-1, 
15-0, 9-2, 4-4,. . . . — vary greatly. With a normal distribution the standard 
deviation may be assumed always to yield a comparable unit. Hence, if 
first expressed as the multiple of this unit, the difference observed at any 
one age between two tests may be legitimately averaged with the difference 
observed at any other age. 

By means, therefore, of a table of deviates for the normal curve, each 
percentage 2 in the body of Table HI. was first converted into terms of the 
standard deviation (S.D.). The differences between the figures so found, taken 
in successive pairs, were then averaged. Adding the average differences in series 
cumulatively gives the distances of the several tests from an arbitrary zero. 

Thus constructed, the linear scale of tests may be depicted graphically by 
the graduated line in Figure 21. The vertical marks upon the horizontal line 
indicate the individual tests, the longer strokes showing the first tests of the 
several age-groups. On the whole, except toward the upper end of the 
series, the distribution of the tests is tolerably uniform. At age XIII. the tests 
begin to spread out very widely ; and they are somewhat widely scattered 
at age III. ; but between these limits the number in each S.D. interval, 
that is, in each successive unit along the imaginary base-line, approaches 
roughly — very roughly, it must be owned — to equality. In ages V. and VI. 
the tests are somewhat crowded and cramped ; and in the later ages they 
open out again a little too thinly. But here the paucity of the tests is partly 
explained and largely compensated by the progressive decrease in the 
magnitude and significance of the mental year when itself reduced to terms of 
a single standard deviation — a decrease that will emerge more clearly in the 
discussion below (Table IX. and p. 158). Hence, as regards equivalence of 
unit, the number of tests passed provides a measure quite as valid as the number 
of mental years attained. 

Thus the new arrangement is about as accurate in the equality of the 
test-intervals as it is in the fixity of the test-order, neither approximately 
perfect, nor wholly precarious, but for rough purposes and provisional use, 
sufficiently satisfactory. 

As a scientific scale the graduation of the Binet-Simon tests is not, and 
cannot by any means be made exact. To obtain a scale at once more stable 
and more uniform, a far greater variety of tests must be first assembled. 
Vacant intervals could then be filled ; and tests that in difficulty virtually 
duplicate each other could be abandoned. 

Principles Determining the Age-Assignment of Each Test. 

In assigning each test to an appropriate age, what is the best numerical 
criterion ? On this point much controversy has arisen. Binet, it would 
seem, started from the principle that an average child should, on attaining 

(') For a definition of this term see note (1), p. 265. To the lay reader Figure 21 will probably be the more 
intelligible, the less it is explained. The statistician, however, will rightly demand the technical account 
of its construction. 

( 2 ) In view of the large influence exerted upon measures in terms of S.D. by a small error in extremely 
high or low percentages, those over 90 per cent, and those under 10 per cent, were disregarded. 



CCS W 



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71 
UJ 
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o 

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140 

each birthday, perform all the tests allotted to the year then reached. This 
assumption carried the following corollary : every test must be passed by a 
majority among the children of the precise age to which it is assigned. But 
what proportion constitutes a majority ? Opinions conflict. Pearson and 
Jaederholm suggest 55 per cent. ; Terman and Childs, 66 per cent. ; Goddard, 
75 per cent., " or more." To Bobertag, Binet wrote : " A test may be 
assigned to a given age if only 65 per cent, succeed. ... If 90 per cent, 
succeed, it is perhaps too easy." An increasing number of investigators, 
however, have adopted a criterion of 75 per cent, for every age. But one 
cardinal fact all such proposals ignore. Expressed in terms of mental age, 
the average range of ability increases markedly from year to year. A range 
of five mental years (namely, from III. to VIII.) includes all the children 
aged five chronologically ; to include all the children aged ten, double that 
range (namely, from V. to XV.) is needed. 1 Hence, if a criterion of 75 per 
cent, be adopted at age five, a criterion of far less than 75 per cent, would 
be required at age ten, otherwise in the latter instance the dividing line will 
be removed to a greater distance above the average. 

From this perplexity there is an easy escape. Let the children be 
grouped, not, as with Binet, by their age at their nearest birthday, but 
by their age at their last birthday. The age of the groups will thus average 

5 J years, 6| years. . . ., respectively, not 5-0 years, 6-0 years Now, a 

correct allotment of the tests implies that in every normal group the average 
mental age shall coincide with the average chronological age. Clearly, 
to satisfy this requirement, not only must each child pass all the tests for 
his own year (that is, for age V., if he is five but not yet six) ; but, in addition, 
all the children must, on an average, pass half the number of tests for the 
year above (that is, for age VI.), or — to change the form of statement — half 
the number of children must, on an average, pass all those tests. If any 
chance to pass an occasional test from a yet higher age where theoretically 
all should fail (as age VII.), this will, in a symmetrical distribution, be 
counterbalanced by an occasional failure in the lower ages where theoretically 
all should succeed (as age IV.). 2 Here, then, is a simple criterion, uniform 
throughout the scale, identical for every age. To be assigned to any given 
year, a test should be passed by approximately 50 per cent, of the children who 
are nominally of the year below. Tests for age IV. should be passed by 50 per 
cent, of the children aged three last birthday, and so through all the 
series. It might perhaps seem less confusing to name such tests three-year- 
old tests, thus indicating that they are crucial tests for those aged over three 
but not yet four. For the present, however, the Binet nomenclature has 
been preserved. The tests in question are called IV.-year tests (Roman 
numerals being used according to the common convention), meaning thereby 
that they are tests which should all be passed before the mental age of 4-0 
can be scored. 

By this criterion, then, the tests have been apportioned among the 
several ages. It will be remarked that certain tests fall nearly midway 
between the two groups. Sentence building (one sentence) is passed by 



(') I have already drawn attention to an analogous phenomenon in the case of educational ability. 
See Memorandum on Distribution and Relations of Educational Abilities (1916). p. 31 and Fig. 5. 

( 2 ) It is important to note that, in virtue of the very peculiarity that has given rise to this embarrassment 
— the increase of standard deviation with increasing age — this compensation does not obtain with an equiva- 
lence absolutely exact. Suppose there are the same number of tests, say five, at each year. Then, measured 
in terms of the standard deviation of a middle age-group, say age ten, a test for age XII. is not as a unit 
equivalent of a test for age VIII, since thus measured one-fifth of a year at XTT, is less than one-fifth of a 
year at VIII. Hence, if the distribution of the age-group be strictly normal when its standard deviation is taken 
as unit, it must cease to be strictly normal when the mentalyear is taken as unit. 



141 

43-0 per cent, at the age of ten, and by 58-1 per cent, at age eleven. A 
difference of only 1-1 per cent, in either age would have transferred the test 
from age XI. to age XII. On an average, it will be found, about 72 per cent, 
pass the tests for their own age, although in single testa the percentage 
varies from a little over 50 in the highest ages to all but 100 in the lowest. 

Consequent Changes in Age-Assignments. 

For purposes of comparison I have tabulated in an appendix 1 the 
various age-assignments proposed for each test by all those investigators 
whose data are both accessible and comparable. The table re-echoes a shrill 
discordance between the various utterances — a discordance which does not 
always catch the ears of a public somewhat deafened by the panegyrics on 
Binet's general scheme. One adjustment keys a test up ; another keys it down ; 
others, again, tune the whole gamut from a note peculiar to themselves. 

With the average or commonest assignment for each test the present 
recommendations chime in tolerable consonance. If anything, they are 
flattened a trifle below the age most generally assigned : for London 
children the tests as graduated by the aggregate results of previous inves- 
tigators would be pitched a degree too easy. In comparison, therefore, 
with other children tested by the scale, the child of the London elementary 
school appears somewhat precocious. 

Placed against the age-assignments originally prescribed by Binet, the 
present results iterate and emphasise the overruling need for radical revision. 
At least thirty-four tests out of the sixty-five need to be reset. The table 
subjoined (Table VI.) enumerates the changes which involve a displacement 
of more than one year. 



TABLE VI. -THE LARGER CHANGES IN AGE-ASSIGNMENTS. 


Binet, 1908. Binet, 1911. 


London Data. 


4 Colours VIII. VII. 


V. 


5 Numbers VII. VIII. 


VI. 


Weekdays . . . . . . IX. Omitted. 


VI. 


6 Numbers (omitted by Binet : X. suggested by Goddard) 


VIII. 


Definition (abstract) . . . . XI. XII. 


XIV. 


Problems XII. XV. 


XIII. 


3 Rhymes XII. XV. 


XII. 


7 Numbers XII. XV. 


XL 



Upon one point the present results and those of most recent investigators 
are in unison. The tests assigned by Binet to the lower ages appear — with 
the one exception of " divided card " — far too simple for London children. 
As a consequence, eight tests are now crowded into age V., and twelve 
(including, however, five omitted from the 1911 series) into age VI. ; this 
leaves for the higher ages only two or three apiece. On the other hand, in 
the higher ages Binet's assignments are perhaps a little too stern. Two 
tests allotted by him to age X., and two allotted to age XL, prove to be too 
difficult ; and are, therefore, relegated to a later year. In ages V. and VI. it 
might, on a hasty view, appear judicious to abridge the number of tests ; 
but, since during the younger ages a difference of one year has more signifi- 
cance than at the older ages, it becomes convenient to retain the minuter 
differentiation thus provided. 

The new assignments introduce large alterations into the estimates of 

(') See Appendix I., pp. 212-15. 



142 

mental age as based upon the Binet- Sirnon tests (see Table VII.). Children 
whom the 1911 revision would credit with a mental age of 6-0, 7-0, and 15'0 
respectively, would, according to my rearrangement, be awarded a mental 
age almost exactly a year below. On the other hand, a child credited by that 
revision with a mental age of 10-0 would now score nearly ten and a half. 
Doubtless the average social footing of the London child is somewhat above 
that of the particular subjects tested by Binet in his standardisation ; the 
latter are described as children of Parisian ouvriers, living in a district 
" pauvre sans etre miserable." But, even after due allowance for this has been 
granted, the differences remain considerable. They demonstrate beyond 
dispute how urgent a fresh calibration is, before the scale can be cited for 
evidence of retardation great enough to convict of mental deficiency. 



TABLE VII. 

The Conversion of Mental Ages based upon Binet's Original Scales 
into Mental Ages based upon London Age- Assignments . 



Mental Age based 

upon Original 

Binet Scales. 



Corresponding Mental Age according 
to Present Rearrangement- 



For 190S Scale. 



For 1911 Scale. 



III. 


2-8 


2-8 


IV. 


3-9 


3-9 


V. 


4-5 


4-5 


VI. 


5-2 


5-2 


VII. 


5-9 


5-9 


VIII. 


7-2 


7-3 


IX. 


8-5 


9-0 


X. 


10-2 


10-4 


XI. 


11-3 


— 


XII. 


14-0 


11-7 


XIII. 


15-0 


— 


XIV 


— 


— 


XV 


— 


14-0 


Adult. 


— 


16-0 



Explanatory Note. — A child obtaining a mental age of X. by Binet's 1911 
scale will have passed thirty-nine tests in that scale — five for every mental age 
from III. to X., except IV., which has only four tests. In addition, he would 
presumably pass the nine tests assigned to various ages from VI. to IX. in 
the 1908 scale, but dropped in the 1911 ; and also the tests of repeating 
four and six numbers — tests omitted in the Binet scales, but here assigned 
to ages VI. and VIII. — had these various supernumerary tests been given 
to him. Actually, or by implication, therefore, he passes fifty tests, which, 
according to the key for the London assignments (Table II., facing page 19), 
accords him a mental age of 10-4. The other ages have been converted by 
a similar calculation. 

Three ages in the 1908 scale (XIV., XV., and Adult), and three in the 
1911 scale (XL, XIII. , XIV.), have no tests awarded them in Binet's arrange- 
ment ; hence, no corresponding London assignments can be calculated. 



143 



Order of Difficulty of the Tests for Defectives. 

The orders of difficulty obtained respectively with defectives and with 
normals are far from coinciding. The total number of special school children 
passing each test has already been given in Table IV. According to the 
fresh order indicated by these figures, the list of tests has there been re- 
arranged once more. The differences of position shown by each test in the 
two rankings have been calculated by subtraction ; they are shown in 



TABLE VIII. 

Differences in Order of Difficulty for Normals and Defectives. 

(The sign -+- indicates that a test is relatively easier for normals : 
the sign — indicates that a test is relatively easier for defectives.) 



Test. 


Difference in 
Order. 


Test. 


Difference in 
Order. 


Dictation 


+ 8 


3 Numbers 





Reading (6 Facts) 


+ 6 


Picture (Enumeration) 





Reading (2 Facts) 


+ 6 


Sex 





Diamond 


+ 6 


Pointing 





4 Numbers 


+ 5 


Sentence Building (2) . . 


— 1 


6 Sjdlables 


+ 5 


Change 


— 1 


Difficult Questions 


+ 4 


Date 


— 1 


Definition (Class) 


+ 4 


Pence and Halfpence . . 


— 1 


16 Syllables 


+ 4 


4 Coins 


— 1 


Triple Order 


+ 4 


Age . . 


— 1 


Mixed Sentences . . 


+ 3 


2 Lines 


— 1 


3 Rhymes 


+ 3 


Naming 


— 1 


5 Numbers 


4- 3 


Problems 


— 2 


Divided Card 


+ 3 


5 Weights 


- 2 


Days of Week 


+ 3 


13 Pennies 


_ 2 


2 Weights 


+ 3 


Fingers 


2 


10 Syllables 


+ 3 


4 Colours 


_ 2 


2 Numbers 


+ 3 


4 Pennies 


- 2 


Sentence Building (1) 


+ 2 


Surname 


— 2 


Absurdities 


+ 2 


Morning and Afternoon 


- 3 


Count 20 to 1 


+ 2 


Square 


- 3 


Transcription 


+ 2 


Months 


- 5 


7 Numbers 


+ 1 


Right and Left 


— 5 


60 Words 


+ 1 


9 Coins 


- 7 


Differences (Concrete) 


+ 1 


Easy Questions 


- 7 


Missing Features 


+ 1 


Definition (Use) 


— 7 


26 Syllables 





Picture (Description) . . 


- 8 


Memory Drawing 





Picture (Interpretation) 


- 9 


6 Numbers 





Suggestion 


— 12 


Comparing Faces 










Table VIII. arranged according to size. Here, near the head of the first 
column, are to be found those tests which offer relatively the hardest obstacles 
to the defective. These pontes asinorum seem to sort themselves into four 
or five broad classes : ( 1 ) scholastic tests of a linguistic character (dictation, 
reading) ; (2) tests of immediate memory (two, four, five, seven numbers ; 
six, fifteen, twenty-six syllables ; perhaps triple order) ; (3) reasoning tests 
and tests involving critical perception (absurdities, differences (class), 
definition _ (concrete), perhaps missing features, divided card, and two 



144 

weights) ; (4) certain other linguistic tests requiring facility in manipulating 
words (mixed sentences, difficult questions, rhymes, three words in one 
sentence, sixty words in three minutes) ; (5) other scholastic tests depending 
on acquirements which should be learnt at an early period (transcription, 
weekdays, counting backwards, perhaps drawing the rhombus). 

Toward the end of the list the plan of arrangement places those tests 
which, relatively speaking, prove easier for the defective. These likewise 
belong to several categories, tolerably distinct : (1) picture tests (particu- 
larly interpretation and enumeration) ; (2) simple money tests (change, 
pennies, and halfpennies) ; (3) mechanical counting (four pennies, thirteen 
pennies) ; (4) scholastic tests depending upon information learnt after entering 
the special school (right and left, months, date) ; (5) tests of general infor- 
mation, depending principally upon age and experience (names of coins, of 
colours, of knife, key, penny ; number of ringers, easy questions, definition 
(use), age, surname, morning and afternoon, problems, perhaps suggestion 
and five weights). 

For many tests the shift in location is pronounced. Suggestion, with 
normals a test for age XIII., proves with defectives to be easier than either 
reading (six facts) or definition (class), tests with normals for age IX. Nine 
coins, change, and months, which with normals are also tests for age IX., prove 
easier for defectives than dictation, passed by normals at age VII. Accord- 
ingly, in applying the tests to defectives or to those suspected of deficiency, 
it will be prudent to adhere rather to the order of difficulty for special school 
children. Otherwise, when borderline children fail with definition (concrete) 
and five weights, the examiner, following the normal order, may forget 
they still may pass such tests as suggestion or picture (interpretation). 

By a strange irony many of the tests which, on the ground of their 
scholastic nature, Binet rejected in his last revision (1911), stand among 
those that differentiate defectives most profoundly from the normal. This 
circumstance it is, no doubt, that has biassed many observers in favour of the 
earlier scale (1908). It might even, as a corollary, be claimed that scholastic 
tests are among the best tests of intelligence. Theoretically the claim is by no 
means indefensible. In practice, however, the play of specific educational 
abilities and of specific educational defects, still more the wide variety of 
scholastic opportunity and of teaching efficiency, would import into estimates 
deduced merely from tests of school knowledge unknown and unadjustable 
errors. In English special schools the children have been selected largely 
by reason of their inability to profit by the ordinary method of instruction. 
During the early ages at which most defectives are certified, such inability 
resolves itself, among the higher grades, into an incapacity for learning to 
read and write and spell with customary speed. Naturally, therefore, it is 
among tests of these very processes that the differences between special and 
ordinary schools most prominently emerge. 

That linguistic disabilities more particularly characterise tlie higher grades 
in schools for the defective is a fact of no small moment. Practical experi- 
ence confirms this observation in two ways. In the higher classes of special 
(M.D.) schools the staple ground of complaint is that tlie children are dispropor- 
tionately backward in reading : among the older children left in the ordinary 
elementary school it is that they are backward in arithmetic. 

Average Scores at Each Age. 

The average number of tests passed at each age by children from ordinary 
and special schools respectively is given in Table IX. The data are plotted 
graphically in Figure 26 (facing page 191, continuous lines, black and red). In 



145 



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146 

figure and table the averages shown are the usual arithmetic means. But, 
with tests thus unevenly distributed, the arithmetic mean scarcely yields a 
satisfactory index for the central tendency in the various age-groups. For 
the normal children averages so inaccurate would prove a grave disadvantage, 
since upon their averages our norms are to be based. 

Among normals the fact and its causes are transparent. The members 
of each age-group appear distributed asymmetrically along the scale of tests ; 
and the list of tests ceases abruptly with two or three hard tests whose age- 
assignment is obscure, preceded by half a dozen tests that most bright 
children over twelve can pass. For the older ages, therefore, the upper end 
of the frequency-distribution is sharply curtailed. On the other hand, the 
lower tail of the middle ages sprawls back through the twenty tests assigned 
to ages V. and VI. The two tendencies combine to drag down the arithmetic 
means for all but the youngest age-groups. With distributions of this stamp 
the median should be the more appropriate measure. 

Calculation shows that for almost every year in the latter half of the 
age-series the medians rise above the arithmetic means by one or two units. 
Since each test has been assigned to its particular age-group just because it 
is passed by about half that age-group, and since again within a given age 
the tests increase in difficulty by approximately equal increments, it follows 
that the median for each age should fall about the middle of the tests for 
that age. This anticipation actual calculating verifies. With small groups, 
however, and with discontinuous variables, the precise determination of the 
median involves a procedure somewhat arbitrary. It will be convenient, 
therefore, to treat the central value for each age-group as falling exactly in 
the middle of the series of tests assigned to it. The values thus assumed 
rarely deviate from the calculated medians by more than 0-5. 

To the standard deviations expressed in terms of tests (Table IX., 
column 3) small interest attaches. They are determined chiefly by the 
relative number of tests appropriated, as nearly equal in difficulty, to each 
age. Thus, among both normals and defectives, those groups with whom 
the many tests assigned to ages V. and VI. become crucial exhibit the largest 
standard deviations. 

Conversion of Score into Mental Age. 

In Binet's " metric scale," the outstanding novelty, the central pillar 
of the whole design, is the measurement of intelligence by means of age. 
It is an easy and alluring notion. As the woodman, who has cut down an 
oak, estimates the length of its life by counting the annual rings across its 
trunk, so the teacher can measure the mental age of a child by making with 
the tests a cross-section of its mind, and reckoning the number of equivalent 
years which its successes in those tasks denote. Thus the notion of mental 
development provides the final unit, as it formed the initial aim, of the 
Binet-Simon scale. How is the reckoning to be made ? 

To convert the failures and successes into terms of equivalent years, 
various formulse have been proposed. Binet's ultimate recommendation 
may be summarised thus : Credit the child with the highest age in which 
he passes all the tests ; and for every further test passed add an appropriate 
fraction of a year. Since in the 1911 scale there are five tests for every age 
(except age IV.), each test counts as one-fifth of a year. From time to 
time a child may also fail with a test or two from sets below the 
highest age in which he passes all. Should corresponding fractions be de- 
ducted ? If an unusual success is to be entered to his account, should not 
an unusual failure be balanced equally against him ? This Binet nowhere 



Figure 22. 

DISTRIBUTION ACCORDING TO MENTAL AGE OF CHILDREN 

OF ORDINARY ELEMENTARY AND SPECIAL (M.D.) 

SCHOOLS AT EACH CHRONOLOGICAL YEAR. 



YEARS 
16 



_l 
< 
h 
Z 

u 

1 



: : 
v 



J L 



J I L 



6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 

CHRONOLOGICAL AGE 



Best 



+IS.D. z 
O 
JO 
:: Average 2 



-IS.D. 



Best 



Worst 

♦ IS.D. 



0> 



:: Average 



.. -ISO m 



Worst 



YEARS 



To face page 147.] 



147 

explicitly states. Indeed, he and his earlier followers evidently assumed 
that the breakdown would be far more sudden and abrupt than actually it 
proves, and that for most children the range of critical tests would be con- 
fined to one or two years at most. Later investigators, however, have 
demonstrated beyond question the need for carrying the child over an 
extended span of tests. Every test, therefore, about which there can be the 
least particle of doubt should be given to the child ; and he should be debited 
with every failure, as well as credited with every success. Such a procedure 
treats each success as of equal merit. Children who pass the same number 
of tests score exactly the same mental age, irrespective of the special nature 
of the particular performances in which individually they succeed or succumb. 
Of two children, both succeeding, let us say, with sixty tests, the one who 
succeeds with suggestion — a test for age XIII., but fails with definition (class) 
— a test for age IX., is accorded an age no higher than the one who fails with 
the former but succeeds with the latter. Assigned to an older age, sug- 
gestion, it is true, proves for the majority the harder test ; but to assume 
that it is in consequence the harder test for either of the individuals in 
question would involve an evident fallacy. 

This general principle — the treatment of tests as convertible, colour- 
less units — facilitates the construction of a simple index for translating the 
test-score immediately into a mental age and for deducing from age the 
number of tests that should be passed. It is shown and explained in 
Table II., 1 and has been used throughout the present work. 



3. THE DISTRIBUTION OF INTELLIGENCE. 

Distribution of Mental Ages among Normals and Defectives. 

In accordance with the age-assignments as now revised, the estimate 
for the intelligence of every child has been converted into terms of mental 
years. The numbers of normal children attaining each mental level at each 
age are shown in Table X. As before, percentages were first computed for 
each school separately, and then weighted according to its representative 
character before the averages in the table were finally calculated. This 
age-and-intelhgence table may be compared with the age-and-standard table 
published in my memorandum on educational abilities. 2 The comparison 
suggests that intelligence varies more widely than school capacity, and that 
possibly school methods prime and prod the backward a little nearer to the 
average standard, but do not exploit to its utmost the inborn intelligence of 
the more acute. They tend to level attainments without equalising ability. 

Table XL exhibits in like fashion the distribution of ability among the 
special school children. It may be compared with the age-and-grade table 
for defectives in the memorandum on educational abilities. 3 In the present 
table the absence of the lowest grades of deficiency will be remarked at the 
older ages ; but the re-transference of brighter children to ordinary schools 
is not so conspicuously evident as in the table for educational ability. 

The averages and standard deviations in terms of mental years are given 
for the several age-groups, both normal and defective, in Table IX. 
(columns 4, 5, 8, and 9). The data are plotted graphically in Figure 22. In 
this figure the vertical fines represent the total range of ability at each age, 
black indicating the children of the ordinary elementary schools, red those 
of the special (M.D.) schools. The cross near the centre of each line marks 
the age-average ; the arrowhead at either end the brightest or dullest child 

t 1 ) Page 19 ' ( 2 ) Lot. lit., page 22. Table IX. ( 3 ) Lot. sit., p. 8. Table II. 



148 

in the group. The thickened portion of the line measures a distance of + and 
— 1 S.D. above and below the average. Between these limits, a range in 
all of twice the standard deviation, fall 68-3 per cent, of a normal distribu- 
tion, that is, just over two-thirds of the whole group. The diagram reveals, 
at every age and stage, a broad and unmistakable overlap between the 
children of special and ordinary schools. 

Among the normals the average mental age coincides almost exactly 
with the chronological age, except in the older years. Here the reduction in 
the size of the averages for intelligence, an attenuation due to the lack of 



TABLE X. 
Distribution of Intelligence. Ordinary Elementary Schools. 



Chrono- 






Mental Age. 






logical 






























Age. 


2 — 


3- 


4- 


5- 


6- 


7- 


8- 


3 - . 




6-7 


63-5 


29-8 














4 - . 




2-4 


18-6 


50-3 


28-7 


— 


— 


— 


5 - . 




— 


1-5 


19-6 


62-3 


16-0 


0-6 


— 


6 - . 




— 


— 


3-8 


26-2 


43-9 


23-1 


2-7 


7 - . 




— 


— 


0-3 


5-7 


22-4 


42-5 


20-3 


8 - . 




— 


— 


— 


0-9 


5-1 


23-2 


38-7 


9 - . 




— 


— 


■ — 


0-2 


2-9 


9-8 


22-0 


10 - . 




— 


— 


— 


— 


0-4 


2-6 


6-4 


11 - . 




— 


— 


— 


— 


— 


0-5 


3-5 


12 - . 




— 


— 


— 


— 


— 


. — . 


0-8 


13 - . 




— 


— 


— 


— 


— 


— 


0-3 


14 - . 




— 


— 


— 


— 


— 


— 


— 


Average 
















Chrono- 


3-8 


3-8 


4-5 


5-6 


6-8 


7-8 


8-8 


Age. 

















higher tests, becomes pronounced. Among the special school children the 
amount of retardation progressively increases. The curve or trajectory of 
growth is for them flattened at the top. The decline insinuates that by the 
age of fourteen many of the defectives are nearing their mental limit. 

Percentiles. 

Where the distribution of measurements is normal, it is possible, when 
a child's measurement is known, to locate his position in a sample group 
purely by inference from the average of that group and its standard devia- 
tion. With the Binet-Simon scale the distribution of the nine-year-old 
children, measured in mental years, agrees pretty closely with the normal 
curve. The average for this age is 9-4, approximately nine and a half years ; 
the standard deviation 1-24, approximately one year and a quarter. A given 
child, aged nine six months ago, passes, let us say, forty-one tests ; and, 
therefore, has a mental age of eight exactly. He is thus retarded by one 
and a half years, or about 1| times the standard deviation (1£-^1-24 = 1-21). 
From a table for the probability integral we can at once discover that in a 
normally distributed group approximately 11-5 per cent, will lie beyond the 
limit of —If S.D. This child, therefore, would rank as eighty-ninth in a 
series of a hundred arranged according to intelligence. Such a statement 
gives a clear and ooncrete notion of his intellectual standing. 



149 

In actual fact, I find that two children in my survey, passing this number 
of tests, rank as 267th or 268th in the entire age-group, which comprises 
just under 300 children ; they would rank, therefore, approximately ninetieth 
on a percentage basis. 

Where, however, the distribution of the measurements is asymmetrical 
(as happens most conspicuously in the older age-groups when measured by 
the Binet-Simon scale), the tables for the normal curve can no longer be 
applied. The position inferred from the standard deviation would not 



TABLE X— (continued). 
Distribution of Intelligence. Ordinary Elementary Schools— {continued). 







Mental Ag 


9 






Average 
















Mental 


9- 


10- 


11- 


12- 


13- 


14- 


15- 


Age. 


. 





— . 


— 


— 


— - 


— 


3-7 


— 


— 


— 


— 


— ■ 


— ■ 


— 


4-6 
5-5 
6-5 


0-3 




















71 


1-3 


0-4 


— • 


— 


— 


— 


7-6 


181 


11-7 


1-7 


0-6 


— 


— 


— 


8-6 


35-5 


21-8 


50 


21 


0-7 


— 


— 


9-4 


18-3 


34-8 


23-3 


11-3 


2-1 


0-6 


0-2 


10-6 


8-6 


25-1 


31-7 


20-8 


8-4 


11 


0-3 


11-4 


2-4 


11-2 


19-6 


37-9 


21-3 


6-1 


0-7 


12-3 


1-3 


5-7 


11-4 


18-7 


37-0 


24-3 


1-3 


131 


1-2 


2-8 


3-0 


10-2 


30-4 


48-6 


3-8 


13-8 


9-7 


10-7 


11-6 


12-4 


13-3 


14-0 


13-8 


— 



coincide so closely as above with the position obtaining in reality. And, 
in such circumstances, the child's position can only be deduced from tables 
specially compiled from the actual distribution. A mode of tabulation, 
convenient in form, and already much in use for measurements of children's 
height and weight, is that originally suggested by Sir Francis Galton, and 
termed by him the method of percentiles. Imagine a group of one hundred 
and one children arranged in inverse order of merit. The 1st or worst child 
will mark the zero percentile ; the 101st or best, the 100th percentile ; the 
51st or middle, the 50th percentile or median (and, if the group is symmetrical, 
the average). The 11th, 21st, 31st,. . . .and 91st children will mark the 10th, 
20th, 30th.... and 90th percentiles. Eleven measurements thus suffice to 
indicate the general form of distribution. 

For the results of the Binet-Simon scale such percentiles are shown in 
Table XII. From these the approximate position of a given child in a 
typical series of one hundred children of the same age can be instantly read 
off, as soon as his test-score is known. The reader, however, should beware of 
inferring that equal differences between percentiles indicate equal differences 
in the measurement of ability. In mental age the difference between the 
10th and 20th percentile is half as much again as that between the 30th and 
40th. The difference between the zero and 10th may be, with age-groups of 
the size here dealt with, as much as one or two years (in theory, with an 



150 

infinitely large group it would be infinite) ; while that between the 40th and 
50th is but one- or two-tenths of a year. 

Correlation between Mental Age and Chronological Age. 

The correlation between mental age and chronological age is -954 for 
the normals and -839 for the defectives. 1 For determining from the chrono- 



TABLE XI. 

Distribution of Intelligence. Special (M.D.) Schools. 



Chrono- 
logical 
Age. 








Mental Age. 








Average 
Mental 
Age 


3- 


4- 


5 — 


6- 


7 — 


8- 


9- 


10- 


11- 


6 - . 

7 - . 

8 - . 

9 - . 

10 - . 

11 - . 

12 - . 

13 - . 

14 - . 




34-3 
1-8 

0-9 


65-6 

56-3 

11-6 

9-9 

6-2 

1-9 


41-8 

75-4 

51-9 

24-8 

111 

3-8 

5-3 

5-9 


13-0 
29-6 
35-4 
18-5 
17-1 
13-8 
11-8 


7-3 
29-2 
48-1 
45-7 
26-6 
17-7 


1-2 
3-5 
16-7 
25-7 
35-1 
33-4 


0-9 

1-9 

6-7 

14-9 

21-6 


0-9 
0-9 
4-3 

7-8 


2-0 


4-2 
4-9 
5-5 

5-9 
6-5 

7-2 
7-7 
8-0 
8-3 


Average 

Chronological 

Age 


6-7 


7-4 


9-3 


11-1 


12-1 


13-1 


13-7 


13-9 


14-4 





logical age the approximate mean mental age the regression equations are 
as follows : — 

For normals, 

Mental Age = (-951 x Chronological Age + -357) years. 
For defectives, 

Mental Age = (-535 x Chronological Age + -856) years. 

Thus, on an average, for each chronological year the normal children advance 
mentally about nineteen-twentieths of a year ; and the defectives advance 
rather over half a year ; or, expressed conversely, to accomplish one year 
of normal mental progress defectives require, on an average, 1 year 
10 J months. 

(*) The probable errors for these coefficients are + -001 and + -007 respectively. The correlation ratios 

are as follows : — 

(1) normals (a) mental age on chronological age -953 ; 

(6) chronological age on mental age -951. 

(2) defectives (a) mental age on chronological age -841 ; 

(&) chronological age on mental age -848. 
Tested by comparing the correlation ratios with the correlation coefficients, the regressions appear, among 
the normals, very nearly linear. With the defectives, the regression of chronological age upon mental age 
deviates significantly from linearity, the difference between the squares of the correlation and the ratio being 
nearly three times its own probable error. The averages of the various age-groups, mental and chronological 
(Tables X. and XI.), may be used to plot the regression lines upon a diagram. The divergencies from 
linearity then become plain, and prove chiefly to be due to an obvious peculiarity in the original percentage 
tables : the total number in each chronological age-group drops at the edge of the table (for example, after 
age fourteen) abruptly from 100 to zero ; whereas the total number in the mental age-groups drops more 
gradually. With a mental age of XIV there are distinctly less than 100, and with a mental age of XV. dis- 
tinctly more than zero ; but in the highest mental age-groups there is no child chronologically over fifteen 
since there is no such child in the whole collection. Consequently, the chronological averages for these high 
mental age-groups are comparatively low (see bottom lines of the tables cited). 



151 

4. THE MENTAL RATIO. 

Its Calculation and Constancy. 

If a child's mental age be divided by his chronological age, the quotient 
will state what fraction of ability the child actually possesses out of the 
sum total of ability which at his age he should theoretically possess — both 
amounts being measured in terms of years. This fraction may be termed, 
with Stern, the child's " intelligence quotient," or, more euphoniously 
perhaps, his "mental ratio." It is the counterpart, in measurements of 
intelligence, of the figure I have termed, in scholastic measurements, the 
child's "educational ratio." 1 

The mental ratios of special school children are shown for each age in 
the last column of Table IX. They vary but little. Whereas the degree of 
retardation increases from 2-6 years at seven to 5-5 at thirteen, thus doubling 
in the course of six years, the ratios from age to age seem very nearly con- 
stant. Hence, as a method of indicating the degree of mental deficiency, the 

TABLE XII. 
Distribution of Intelligence. Ordinary Elementary Schools. 

Percentiles for each Age-Group in terms of Mental Age. 







Percentile. 


Age. 




(Worst) 


10th. 


20th. 


30th. 


40th. 


50th 

(Median) 


60th. 


70th. 


80th. 


90th. 


100th 

(Best) 


3- . 




2-0 


2-8 


3-2 


3-4 


3-5 


3-6 


3-8 


4-0 


4-0 


4-2 


4-8 


4- . 




2-2 


3-6 


3-9 


4-1 


4-3 


4-5 


4-6 


4-9 


5-1 


5-4 


5-8 


5- . 




3-2 


4-6 


5-0 


5-2 


5-4 


5-5 


5-6 


5-8 


6-0 


6-3 


7-2 


6- . 




4-0 


5-3 


5-9 


6-2 


6-5 


6-5 


6-7 


6-7 


7-2 


7-7 


8-7 


7- . 




4-7 


6-2 


6-5 


7-1 


7-3 


7-5 


7-8 


8-0 


8-5 


9-0 


10-8 


8- . 




5-2 


7-0 


7-5 


8-0 


8-2 


8-5 


8-7 


9-0 


9-3 


10-4 


12-5 


9- . 




5-7 


7-8 


8-5 


8-8 


9-3 


9-5 


9-7 


10-2 


10-4 


11-7 


13-5 


10- . 




6-8 


8-8 


9-3 


9-7 


10-2 


10-4 


10-8 


11-3 


11-7 


12-5 


14-6 


11- . 




7-7 


9-7 


10-4 


10-8 


11-0 


11-5 


11-7 


12-0 


12-5 


13-5 


15-0 


12- . 




8-7 


10-8 


11-5 


11-7 


12-0 


12-5 


130 


13-0 


13-5 


14-3 


15-5 


13- . 




9-0 


11-3 


12-0 


12-5 


130 


13-5 


14-0 


14-3 


14-7 


15-0 


15-5 


14- . 




9-7 


12-5 


13-0 


13-5 


14-0 


14-3 


14-7 


15-0 


15-0 


15-5 


16-0 



" mental ratio " may justly claim to be, for any given individual, far more 
useful than the statement of retardation, since it is almost independent of age. 
For prognosis it is especially significant. If at the age of eight a child has a 
mental ratio of 75 per cent., being thus retarded by two years, we can predict 
that at twelve his mental level will probably be that of a child of nine, and 
at sixteen that of a child of twelve. 

Changes in Mental Ratio among Defectives. 

These claims, however, are but imperfectly realised. Although, when 
compared with the degree of retardation, the ratio appears throughout 
more constant, yet beneath this comparative stability lurks a perceptible 
drift towards diminution. It is small ; but it is steady. The change is 
demonstrated most easily among the special schools. Here, at first sight, 
the decrease might seem attributable to the retransference of the brightest 



1 Loc. cit. sup., p. 15. 



152 

defectives to ordinary schools, and the continued influx of children in- 
creasingly dull. But of recent years — at any rate, in the schools reviewed — 
these transferences have been rare. Further, the elimination of the worst 
cases proceeds as rapidly as the promotion of the best. And, since the older 
age-groups in the survey are preponderantly drawn from schools for elder 
boys and girls, schools to which the weakest defectives seldom gain admission, 
the children who together make up these groups can hardly constitute 
inferior samples of their year. 

But upon this question direct evidence is of easy access. Besides simul- 
taneously testing successive age-groups, each composed of different individuals 
from the last, we may test during successive years a single age-group com- 
posed of the same individuals. The same child is thus examined at different 
stages of his life. Data of both kinds were included in the records from the 
schools for the mentally deficient. 

At these schools a large number of special cases have been officially 
referred to me, and kept under personal observation for considerable periods. 
Commonly such supervision entails testing the same child again and again 
after intervals of a year or more. By collating the results of such repeated 
tests it is possible to sort defectives into six classes, according as either (I) their 
mental age or (II) their mental ratio, (1) increases, (2) remains the same, 
or (3) declines. They may thus be classified (I) by mental age, as (1) 
progressive, (2) stationary, (3) deteriorating cases ; and (II) by mental 
ratio, as cases of (1) accelerated or compensatory progress ; (2) regular 
or proportional progress ; (3) relative decline. It will be seen that II (1) 
and II (2) are subdivisions of I (1) ; and I (2) and I (3) of II (3). 

In thirty-four of my cases the Binet-Simon tests have been annually 
applied over a period of six years. The average mental ratios in each of the 
successive years are enumerated in Table XIII. 

TABLE XIII. 

Mental Ratios obtained from the Same Children during 
Five Successive Years. 

Date of Testing. Mental Ratio. 

1913 .. 63-7 



1914 
1915 
1916 
1917 
1918 



65-3 
64-5 
62-6 
59-8 
57 1 



In all but eight individuals the mental ratio found on the last application 
of the tests was smaller than that found five years before. And in six of 
these eight the low initial grading at the commencement of the period could 
be clearly traced to external hindrances — weakness of health, ill-treatment 
at home, irregularity of attendance, unsuitable methods at the previous 
school — impediments that afterwards were substantially alleviated. 

In one special (M.D.) school an endeavour has been made to carry 
out by means of the Binet-Simon tests an annual survey of all the 
children in attendance. The population is constantly shifting ; and the 
largest number who remained in the school for at least a second examination 
comprised only some seventy-two boys and girls. These were tested in 1913 
and again in 1914. Of the seventy-two children, two had remained stationary; 
seventeen betray an actual and absolute decline ; and fifty-three could boast 
a definite advance in mental age — an advance occasionally approaching, 



153 

rarely equalling, the actual advance in chronological age. Of those who 
advanced, sixteen had improved mentally by more than a year in the year's 
interval, five by more than a year and a half. The greatest improvement 
was that manifested by a child aged 9 T 7 2 — a boy with a bright animated 
presence, who at the first examination had a mental age of 7-8, and a mental 
ratio, therefore, of 81-4 per cent. ; at the second he had a mental age of 9-5, 
thus advancing 1-7 years, and increasing his ratio to nearly 90 per cent. The 
greatest deterioration was that shown by a low-grade child of 9 T %, who at 
the first examination had a mental age of 5-6 (mental ratio 57-9 per cent.), 
and receded by 1-4 years. 

Among defectives such patent examples of anomalous progress should 
be to the thoughtful teacher of no small interest. A change in the method 
of instruction is occasionally found to precede, and sometimes suffices to 
explain, the unexpected spurt ; those whose advance covered one mental year 
or more are mostly children who at the time of the first examination had 
been admitted to the special school but recently. In other cases some happy 
change in home conditions seemed responsible — a change that has of late 
been witnessed more frequently as a result of increased employment during 
the war. Five, however, are children of ten or more, who have been in 
attendance for several years ; and in every case, with one dubious exception, 
the subsequent history unequivocally suggests that the partial restoration 
must be connected with some deeper cause than mere accident or freak of 
fortune. That cause appears to be an intrinsic irregularity of mental growth. 
Such children are creatures of deferred maturity. Their development is not 
arrested ; it has been postponed. Although upon a lower plane, their mental 
growth runs parallel with that of many cleverer children, in whom the phe- 
nomenon is more familiar. There is many a sharp child whose cycle of 
growth is like that of the mulberry tree, presenting first a long delay, and 
then a sudden yield of flower and fruit together. Their existence is 
recognised in the double scholarship examination. In London at the age 
of thirteen a second examination has been instituted specifically for those 
who in the current phrase " bloom late," and whose anticipated powers, 
therefore, do not ripen by the age of ten. In like fashion, among the classes 
for defectives, time and due season will here and there disclose a sporadic 
" school autumnal." 

There are, then, individuals xvhose imputed deficiency is apparent and 
temporary only. The initial retardation, seldom in these children very 
severe, is redeemed, partly, if not entirely, by a delayed and compensatory 
acceleration. 1 To overlook their latent possibilities, to treat them as de- 
fective for life, because stationary for a year or two, would be as mistaken 
as to root up a Christmas rose because it fails to blossom in the spring. 

But deficiency, as well as normality, may wait until a later age to declare 
itself. A child of 12yV showed a mental level in 1913 of 9-6 years, a ratio, 
therefore, of 77-4. On the basis of the tests even the most stringent American 
standard could hardly convict him of deficiency. A year later he had lapsed 
to a mental level of 9-2 years, a ratio, therefore, of 68-7. And when last 
tested at the age of 14yV, his mental age was 9-4 years, and his ratio 65-3. At 
this stage few would have hesitated to describe him as defective. External 
evidence, it may be added, rendered this diagnosis credibly certain from 
earlier years. Another child, aged 7-j^-, who at the first examination had a 
mental age of 6-4, at the second showed no discoverable change. He was 
still on the same low plane. At the beginning of the year his mental ratio, 
84-4 per cent., might be thought sufficient to absolve him of deficiency. 

(') These cases seem analogous to those aptly designated by Dr. Auden instances of " larval capacity " 
(Annual Revort of the School Medical Officer for Birmingham, 1912). 



154 

But at the end of the year it had dropped to 74-6 per cent. ; and in the 
course of five more years, by sheer increase of physical age, to barely 70 per 
cent. Here, however, there were tokens that the subnormality was one of 
temperament and character quite as much as of intelligence. I would add 
that, as a general rule, such a progressive decline in the mental ratio is distinc- 
tive of neuropathic and psychopathic cases. Where low intelligence is associated 
with epilepsy, whether overt or masked, the deterioration may be most pro- 
found. Where low intelligence is accompanied by temperamental instability 
— a conjunction seen in day schools far more frequently than epileptic compli- 
cations — the symptom is yet commoner, though not so clear. Even where 
there is no such aggravation evident, the ratio will occasionally dwindle ; so 
that a child, whom at six the most rigorous would hardly dub feeble-minded, 
at sixteen the most tolerant could hardly deem normal. Such individuals are 
perhaps analogous to those described by Doll as " potentially feebleminded." * 
Almost invariably, however, during their school career they are borderland 
children, cases on the verge. Rarely is the transformation radical. A 
bright child never turns into an imbecile ; nor can a typical special school 
pupil climb to the height of an average normal. Indeed, in my list of suspects 
an appearance of latent deficiency has usually been explicable by the arti- 
ficiality of our standards. Like most realities in nature, growth is irregular. 
Our line of demarcation is as straight and as fictitious as the equator. That 
certain children, whether judged by retardation or judged by ratio, veer to 
one side of a hypothetical boundary this year, and pass to the other side next, 
should be no more astounding than that a river frontier does not follow an 
arbitrary line of latitude, or the northern coast of Europe coincide with the 
Arctic circle. These vacillating nondescripts should be watched. They vex 
in no small measure the task of diagnosis and certification. Of the two forms, 
diminution in mental ratio is commoner than increase ; and among those 
of my cases that have shown a diminution relatively rapid, the greater 
portion have occurred either towards the beginning or towards the end of the 
school career, that is, about the ages of seven to eight or of twelve to fourteen. 
But neither speed nor amount of decline are, as a rule, considerable. Apart 
from accident, disease, or other extraneous factor, seldom, if ever, does a 
young child of nearly average ability grow up into a typical case of mental 
defect. In the few individuals that have been brought to me as clear examples 
of complete transition some definite disturbance has been discoverable as 
the underlying cause : most frequently incipient dementia prcecox. 

In view of the possibility of latent normality and latent deficiency, it is 
essential, particularly ivith children of younger ages, to supplement the evidence 
of the tests by evidence from other sources. Even so, to give a final diagnosis 
may not be justifiable until the child has been observed and tested for some 
months, perhaps for some years. For cases where latent deficiency or latent 
normality has been suspected, but not verified, a mental clinic or observation- 
centre seems indispensable. We need, as it were, a psychological dark-room 
where we may seclude for delicate scrutiny our undeveloped negatives. 

For the seventy-two children, re-examined after an interval of a year, 
the average change in mental age and mental ratio is shown in Table XIV. 2 
With the majority there was no question of latency. They appeared un- 
mistakably deficient from the first ; and, so far as they have been traced, 
they have remained defective — at any rate in the sense of the relevant 

i 1 ) See Training School Bulletin. 1916, Vol XIII.. No. 3, pp. 54-61 ; No. 6, pp. 159-163 ; Clinical 
Studies in Feeblemindedness, 1917. Also Goddard, Journal of Psvclio-Asthenics, 1913, Vol. XVII., No. 4 
p. 125. Florence Mateer, Pedagogical Seminary, 1918, Vol. XXV., pp. 369-392. 

( 2 ) Where, owing to absence of the child or other cause, the interval between the two examinations was 
not exactly 365 days, the amount of change has been reduced proportionately to this basis. 



155 

Education Act — to this day. The average 1 progress made by the entire 
group during the year was + 0-47 mental years, a rate of barely one-half a 
mental year per annum. This figure, obtained by repeating the tests with 
identical children, concurs with the general result before observed, where the 
successive age-groups differed in respect of the individuals composing them, 
A progress of but half a year per annum implies, it will be noted, an annual 
increase in the absolute amount of retardation. 



TABLE XIV. 

Annual Change in Mental Age and Mental Ratio in the Same Children, 
Grouped according to Age. 





Number of 
Children. 


1913. 


19 

Mental 
Age. 


14. 

Mental 
Ratio. 


Change in 

Mental 

Age. 


Change in 


Age last 
Birthday. 


Mental 
Age. 


Mental 
Ratio. 


Mental 
Ratio. 


7 . 


4 


5-17 


69-0 


5-50 


64-7 


+ •33 


-4-3 


8 . 


15 


501 


59-0 


5-79 


61-0 


+ •78 


+ 2-0 


9 . 


15 


6-06 


63-8 


6-57 


62-5 


+ •51 


- 1-3 


10 . 


11 


6-45 


61-5 


6-99 


60-8 


+ •54 


- 0-7 


11 . 


8 


7-25 


63-0 


7-47 


59-7 


+ •22 


- 3-3 


12 . 


8 


7-87 


63 1 


8-20 


60-7 


+ •33 


-2-4 


13 . 


7 


7-63 


56-5 


8-03 


55-4 


+ •40 


- 11 


14 . 


4 


7-65 


52-8 


7-67 


49-6 


+ •02 


-3-2 



The average change in mental ratio is during a single year only —1-1 per 
cent. In this enquiry, therefore, the mental ratio remains pretty steadfast 
from one year to the next. Among the children aged eight, however, the 
table reveals an increase. That increase is to be traced to the salutary in- 
fluence of the special methods of education upon nine or ten individuals 
lately transferred to the school. An analysis of the results, both here and 
elsewhere, divulges that immediately after transference to special (M.D.) 
schools an unusual degree of progress is, as a rule, made by the younger children. 
Seldom, however, does the advance equal one mental year per annum, the 
natural rate of the normal child. In the older age-groups, on the other hand, 
there is a conspicuous decrease. So remote are they from maintaining the 
normal rate of progress, that they cannot even maintain their own. This 
seems attributable to two factors. The boys over twelve comprise for the 
most part individuals not sufficiently intelligent to be transferred to an elder 
boys' department. They have been retained in the present school precisely 
because their progress has already slackened almost to a halt. Indeed, 
of the boys aged fourteen every one had reached his mental limit at the time 
of the first examination. But in the other age-groups showing the same 
excessive decline such low-grade boys formed only a minor proportion. A 
second and more general explanation must, therefore, be sought ; for neither 
the girls over twelve nor the children of either sex between eleven and twelve 
include a preponderance of low-grade types. The gradual subsidence of 
progress must be a universal characteristic. The lowest grades have no 
monopoly. Older defectives of all levels exhibit a premature loss of develop- 
mental impetus. Like a shell projected with an inadequate charge, their 
momentum is exhausted half-way to the target. 

(*) In calculating the averages cited in this paragraph, the averages for the several age-groups as given 
in the table have first been weighted according to the number of children in each age-group. Thus, they 
represent the averages for the entire group of children calculated regardless of age. 



156 

But, it may still be asked, does not the abatement of progress, as ex- 
pressed by the decrease in mental ratio, occur more frequently among the 
lowest grades than among the highest ? The answer is not far to seek. 
Higher or lower grades may best be distinguished, irrespective of age, by 
their initial mental ratios. According to their initial mental ratio, therefore, 
the children have been regrouped ; and the average change in mental age 
and ratio recalculated. The results are shown in Table XV. The entire 
number falls into three groups or sections. There is, first of all, a group of 
five children who possessed at the commencement of the year a mental 
ratio of over 80 per cent. Each of these five improved at the rate of one 
mental year or more per annum. In the highest grade of special school child, 



TABLE XV. 

Annual Change in Mental Age and Mental Ratio in the Same 
Children, Grouped according to Mental Ratio. 



Mental Ratio. 


No. of Children. 


Change in Mental Age. 


Change in 
Mental Ratio. 


30-35 

35-40 

40-45 

45-50 

50—55 


2 

3 
8 
8 


+ 1-25 

+ 0-59 
+ 0-71 
+ 0-53 


+ 9-1 

+ 0-1 
+ 1-7 
+ 0-3 


55-60 

60-65 

65-70 

70-75 

75-80 


16 

10 

9 

9 

2 


+ 0-23 
+ 0-30 
+ 0-56 
+ 0-23 
+ 0-40 


- 2-7 

- 3-0 

- 0-7 

- 3-8 

- 2-4 


80-85 

85-90 

90-95 


4 

1 


+ 1-12 
+ 1-00 


+ 2-5 

+ 0-8 



therefore, the speed of progress may equal, or even exceed, that of the average 
normal. In such cases, as the last column of the table intimates, the mental 
ratio also expands ; and the celerity of the child's later progress cancels 
much of his original retardation. They may lose half their relative back- 
wardness by recovering all the normal rate. The second group comprehends 
the great majority of the examinees, those with a mental ratio between 
55 and 80 per cent. Here the average rate of progress is under 0-5 mental 
year per annum- — less than half that of the ordinary child. Of the forty-six 
cases in this group only four children reach or surpass the normal rate — one 
year of mental progress in one year of actual time. In thirty-three cases 
the mental ratio declines ; the other thirteen, exceptions to the general 
tendency, occur principally among the younger representatives. Thus, 
with the majority of this section retardation increases, not only in 
absolute amount, but even relatively to age. The progress of the typically 
feebleminded wanes appreciably as the end of their school career is approached : 
their years of growth are few and slow. The third group comprises twenty- 
one children whose mental ratio was less than 55 per cent. In six, including 
practically all the older children in this group, the mental ratio has diminished 
markedly. The large remainder are really exceptions, and support the rule 
that they seem to transgress — the rule, namely, that the lower grades more 



157 

rapidly attain their mental limit. The infraction is more apparent than real. 
Every case has its explanation. Many are younger children recently trans- 
ferred to the special school as flagrantly backward, who during the first year 
under the new conditions made rapid progress, but — as later examinations 
prove — failed to sustain the speed with which they had begun. Some, 
however, seem to improve merely because there is such ample room for im- 
provement. In a young child, with a mental ratio as low as 30 per cent., an 
absolute advance of much less than a single year will effect an increase of 
another 10 per cent. Further, on scrutinising the primary records it is 
evident that at least four children failed originally to do themselves justice 
because — like so many of the lower grades — their capacity fluctuates from 
day to day, and the first inspection overtook them in an unfavourable phase. 
Two at least appear to have failed in the first trial, largely because of the 
novelty of the examination ; and to have improved in the later trial, largely 
because the examination had grown more familiar. 

The twofold influence of low-grade and increasing age is to be seen more 
clearly in Table XVI. This table gives the average change in retardation 



TABLE XVI. 

Annual Change in Mental Ratio in the Same Children, Grouped 
according to both Age and Ratio. 



Mental Ratio at 
Commencement of Year. 


Age at Commencement of Year. 




8- 


9- 


10- 


55-60 

60-65 

65-70 

70-75 

75-80 

80-85 


+ 2-6 

+ 1-8 

+ 4-0 
+ 4-9 


— 9-2 

-2-8 

- 3-6 
0-0 

+ 7-5 


- 1-4 
-4-3 

- 5-5 

+ 0-8 
+ 3-8 



manifested by defectives of various grades at ages eight, nine, and ten — the 
only ages in which there are more than ten children. Figures for the highest 
ages and for the lowest mental ratios are not entered, because the changes 
in the sub-groups — represented as they would be by but one or two indi- 
viduals, and influenced as they are by rare and special conditions — might 
obscure the general tendencies exhibited by the whole. 

It will be seen that within the three age-groups enumerated a large 
decrease in mental ratio is characteristic of, and confined to, the lower 
grades and the higher years. Allowing, then, for extraneous influences that 
supervene in the younger ages, there is some evidence that, when identical 
children are re-tested, low mental ratios tend to become yet lower with the lapse 
of time and the increase of age. The numbers are small ; the cases are selected. 
The evidence, therefore, remains inconclusive. Further data are needed, 
gathered on a large scale from tests applied again and again to the same 
children at successive periods of school life. 

Range of Individual Variability. 

A point of vital consequence is the extent to which the individual 
children, whether normal or defective, may depart from the average for their 
age and category. The standard deviations for each successive year are 



158 

given in Table IX., column 5. (Cf. Figure 22.) The figures are large ; and 
among the children of ordinary elementary schools increase with moderate 
regularity throughout the earlier ages. At ten the rate of increase is relaxed ; 
and during the later years there is, if anything, an absolute diminution. 
Reference to the age-and-intelligence table (Table X.) shows that the decrease 
in the variations may be traced to a special cause — the progressive curtail- 
ment of the frequency distributions towards the upper extremity of the scale 1 : 
were the Binet-Simon tests to be credited, but a handful of the older children 
could reach a mental age above thirteen or fourteen. This curtailment, in turn, 
needs explanation. It may be referred, partly to the fact that the brighter 
children removed at the age of eleven to central and secondary schools are but 
poorly represented, but chiefly to the abrupt and premature termination of the 
scale itself. Towards the lower extremity of the scale 8 the older age-groups 
spread themselves out more and more. The lower half of the distribution, 
which at ten and eleven extends only four mental years below the middle year, 
is at thirteen and fourteen dispersed over as many as five. The asymmetry is 
mostly an artefact. With adequate tests and adequate samples, I suspect the 
scattering would appear no less pronounced towards the upper end than 
towards the lower. Could full allowance be made for these two imperfections, 
the standard deviations would continue steadily to increase, although I suspect 
that, until puberty is approached, the rate of increase would hardly rise to 
that exhibited before the age of ten. At the younger ages, the large deviations 
at five, and again at seven and eight, presumably arise from the wide differ- 
ences in the speed with which the children settle clown in the novel atmosphere 
of infants' school or senior department ; analogous enlargements are to be 
found in the standard deviations for educational ability, although they fall 
about a year later. 3 The diminution at six may be associated with the 
large number of tests which children of this level may pass without altering 
their mental age by more than a fraction of a year. With due deduction 
for these factors, it seems fair to conclude that, at any rate up to the age 
of ten, the standard deviation may be assumed to increase in arithmetical progres- 
sion and to bear a fixed ratio to the mean or median age. In these two features, 
absolute increase and relative constancy from year to year, the range of 
individual variability revealed in general intelligence resembles that dis- 
played in educational ability ; here, also, as I have elsewhere pointed out, 
the standard deviation during the school life is almost directly proportional 
to age. 4 Taken in conjunction, the two characteristics explain the virtual 
uniformity preserved by the " mental ratio " throughout the years of growth. 

On an average, the standard deviation is 11-8 per cent, of age. Thus 
in intelligence, as measured by the present version of the Binet-Simon scale, 
children of London elementary schools tend to vary about the average for their 
age by exactly one year at the age of eight and a half, and throughout the earlier, 
if not the later, half of their school career by nearly one-eighth of their age. The 
figure is large; but it is, if anything, an underestimate. 5 In educational 
ability, it may be remembered, the standard deviation was estimated as 
about 10 per cent, of the age, approximately one-tenth. Hence, individuals 
vary distinctly more in intelligence than they do in educational ability — in effect, 
about a quarter as much again. 

On an average, the special school children are retarded by 3-0 years 

(M i.e., towards right hand of Table X. ( 8 ) i.e., towards left hand of Table X. 

( s ) For precise figures, see Distribution of Abilities, p. 24. Table X. (*) Loc. cit., Fig. 5, facing p. 31. 

( 5 ) If, as is probably the case, the imperfections of the Binet scale introduce considerable errors of 
measurement, this, in accordance with the well-known statistical formula, would tend to magnify the standard 
deviation above its true value. I believe, however, that there is ground for assuming that the apparent 
deviation of individuals varying considerably from their age-average is minimised by the lack of delicacy in 
the tests, that the brightness of the bright child is obscured, and the dullness of the dull palliated. 



159 

at eight ; and throughout the earlier ages by about three times the standard 
deviation of normals of the same age. If the standard deviation be taken 
as 12 per cent, of the age, and the deviation of the defectives be expressed 
as a multiple of that amount, the figure obtained is reasonably constant 
from one year to another. This accords with the facts just noted among the 
normals. The absolute retardation increases ; the relative retardation 
remains nearly the same. The increase in the retardation of defectives is now 
seen to be but a special instance of the general increase in the individual 
deviations among the population as a whole. Measured by the absolute units 
of an age-scale, the difference between individuals, whether normal or defective, 
tend to appear larger as the individuals themselves grow older. 

Overlapping of Age-Groups. 

The difference between the means for any two consecutive ages, when 
expressed in terms of the standard deviation of the lower group, averages 
1-02. Thus, the annual increment is, on an average, approximately equal 
to the standard deviation. In the middle of the series of ages this relation 



Figtjbe 23. 
jOVERLAPPINQ OF CONSECUTIVE AGE=GROUPS. 



Median 
of given age. 



Median 
of age next above. 
--JU. 




-2 - I +1 +2 +3 

SCALE OF INTELLIGENCE IN TERMS OF STANDARD DEVIATION 
OF GIVEN AGE-GROUP. 



holds with sensible exactitude ; the standard deviation at the age of eight 
is approximately one mental year ; and, conversely, the difference between 
the averages for ages eight and nine is approximately 1 S.D. 

This implies an enormous overlap. Throughout, one age-group trenches 
deeply upon its successors. Indeed, within the total range of all the children 
of the age of nine fall the averages of as many as eight distinct age-groups, 
The general extent of the overlapping is pictured schematically in Figure 23. 
The two curves, here assumed to be normal, intersect at a distance of only 
J S.D. from either mean. Virtually 16 per cent, of the lower age-group 
reach or exceed the average of the age-group next above. Measured as 
shown by the shaded portion of the curves, the average amount of overlap 
is 61-7 per cent. From one part of the age-series to another, however, the 
extent of encroachment differs greatly, inclining on the whole to expand. 
The actual amount at different ages is illustrated by Figure 22. In the lowest 
age-groups the overlapping sinks to 50 per cent, or less ; in higher age- 



160 

groups it is much larger ; between the ages thirteen and fourteen it mounts 
to 77 per cent. 

A mental age, therefore, is by no means so definitely determined, or so 
sharply limited, as Binet seemingly supposed. To measure intelligence by 
the yearly stages of intellectual growth is like measuring stature by means 
of a tape, where the lines that separate the inches are half effaced, and the 
figures are so broad, so blurred, and so ill-centred that any one division 
may easily be confounded with the next. In arbitrary terms, of course, each 
year of development may be defined specifically to suit the purpose of the 
scale. But mental age then becomes a purely artificial convention, intelligible 
enough for popular description, convenient enough for rough-and-ready 
estimates, but for scientific measurement and exact research neither indis- 
pensable nor appropriate. 

Distribution of Intelligence with Standard Deviation as Unit. 

The uniformity in the relative retardation enables us to condense into 
a single frequency diagram all the results obtained from the tests, regardless 
of the disparity in age among the groups examined. Expressed in mental 
years, the median for each normal age-group can be taken to mark the 
average for each age ; and the corresponding standard deviation, similarly 
expressed, to denote the unit of measurement. By reference to the original 
test-scores each child, whether from ordinary or special schools, can be re- 
assessed, not now in terms of mental age or mental retardation, but by 
degree of deviation. 1 Re-classified thus, the frequencies for each age can 
then be added legitimately together. The resultant totals, converted into 
percentages for normals and defectives respectively, are given in Table XVII. 

In London the special school children form but a minute fraction 
of the total school population, comprising barely 1J per cent, of all the 
children on the roll at the same ages. In our present sample, however, 
the proportion is decidedly larger. Rightly to compare the two denomina- 
tions, normals and defectives, either the number of the latter must be re- 
duced, or the number of the former augmented, until the ratio of the one 
to the other is approximately as 1-5 to 98-5. This has been effected. For 
clearness I have imagined an aggregate population of 10,000 children, 
distributed in the same way as the children actually tested. Of this total, 
one hundred and fifty will be marked off as special school cases ; the 
remainder presumed to be normal. The two groups are delineated in 
Figure 24. The black outline depicts the normal children ; the red the 
defective. In principle of construction, both frequency polygons are 
identical with the pair already published to illustrate the distribution of 
normals and defectives for educational ability. 2 As before, to display 
columns representing fifty or one hundred children upon the same diagram 
as those representing two thousand or more, the vertical scale is progres- 
sively condensed towards its upper end. This has been done by making 
the actual heights of the columns proportional to the logarithms of the 
numbers indicated, instead of proportional to the numbers themselves. 

This diagram, then, yields the final picture of the distribution of 

(*) The limits of each degree or class have first been translated into terms of the tests passed by means 
of Table II. The smoothed or theoretical standard deviations are used (11-8 per cent, of age) ; and 
to obtain a finer subdivision successive halves of the standard deviation are taken as the limits for each class. 
The steps in the calculation, therefore, are as follows : For age six, median mental age = 6-5 years = 33 
tests. Standard deviation = 11-8 per cent, of 6-5 years = 0-77 years ; - J S.D. from median = (6-5 - 0-38) 
years = 6-12 years = 31-5 tests. Similarly, - 1 S.D. = 5-73 years = 27-6 tests. Percentage aged 6 - falling 
in class - 1 to - J S.D. (i.e., passing more than 27-6 and less than 31-5 tests) = 16 normals and 
defectives. ( 2 ) Loc. cit., sup., Figure 6, facing p. 33. 



161 



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162 

intelligence, as tested by the Binet-Simon scale, among children from ordinary- 
elementary and special (M.D.) schools. 

In the curve for the ordinary elementary schools the symmetry is 
visibly deranged by the absence of adequate tests for the brighter children 
of the older ages. As is inevitable, when, to show the probable distribution of 
a vast population, a small sample is magnified, the tails of the curve appear 
somewhat blunted. The use of the theoretical standard deviation, a magni- 
tude sometimes larger, sometimes smaller than the actual, has peaked the 
figure a little until in form it approaches the old-fashioned sugar-loaf perhaps 
more nearly than the familiar bell-shaped curve. Due allowance, however, 
being made for such disturbances, the diagram, if it does not corroborate, 
does not in any way contradict the hypothesis of "normality," the theory 
that ability is distributed in close conformity with the "normal curve of 
error." 1 From data so irregular, positive evidence to support this theory 
could hardly be extracted. But, where the distortion can be so readily 
explained, where it was, indeed, so naturally to be expected, there, I take 
it, to maintain that the results secured are at least consistent with, if 
not conclusive of, approximate normality, can be no unwarrantable 
extravagance. 

The curve for the defectives, drawn in red, overlaps very broadly 
that for the normals. To compare the present diagram with its analogue 
in my previous memorandum is to perceive at once that the overlap for 
general intelligence is far greater than for educational attainments. In general 
intelligence the average for the defectives falls below the average for the 
normals by about 3-2 times the standard deviation. In educational attain- 
ments the former falls below the latter by over 4-8 times the standard 
deviation, almost exactly half as much again. The contrast endorses what 
I have remarked in another place. The children of London special schools 
differ from normals far less in lack of intelligence than in lack of school 
ability. 

In general intelligence more than half the so-called defectives can readily 
be matched by children left in ordinary schools and therefore presumably 
"normal." Although our investigation was not sufficiently extensive to dis- 
cover such a case, yet probably in a body of nearly ten thousand normal children, 
normally distributed, at least two children would be found between —3-5 
and —4-0 S.D. ; none would be discovered beyond the latter limit, unless 
a group of at least twice the size were examined. Beyond that same limit, 
however, there are no less than fifty defectives. Accordingly, to regard 
these fifty as simply the tail-end of a " normal " group distributed in exact 
accordance with the "normal" curve, would strain the laws of probability 
and stretch the play of chance too far. Actual inspection of many of the 
individual children discloses abnormalities so pronounced, defects so peculiar, 
as to convey that in its essential nature the condition is often pathological. 
No sharp distinction, however, can be erected between the pathological 
defectives and the extreme specimens of " normal " deviation. And a slight 
asymmetry in the curve for normals would, without any further assumption, 
account for every case. 



(') For the theoretical proportions mathematically deduced for a group distributed in perfect agreement 
with the "normal law," see bottom line of Table XVII. 



Figure 24. 



DISTRIBUTION ACCORDING TO GENERAL INTELLIGENCE 

OF CHILDREN OF ORDINARY ELEMENTARY 

AND SPECIAL M.D. SCHOOLS. 



2500 
24-00 
2200 

2000 

1800 

1600 
1400 
1200 

1000 
900 

800 
o 
o 
° 700 



NORMALS 



MENTAL DEFECTIVES 




DEVIATION 



O 
FROM 



+ 1 
AVERAGE. 



4SD 



To face page 162.] 



163 



5 . THE LINE OF DEMARCATION BETWEEN NORMALS 
AND DEFECTIVES. 

Variations in Estimates for the Borderline. 

I now reach the central problem of this memorandum — the line of 
demarcation for mental deficiency. Between normals and defectives where 
is the boundary to be drawn ? What proportion, in a sample thousand or 
ten thousand of the child population, is to be cut off for transference to the 
special (M.D.) schools ? On this question there has been, and still is, the 
acutest controversy. 

For the percentage of the population which is mentally deficient, assess- 
ments made by Royal Commissions and by acknowledged experts conflict 
and differ almost beyond belief. They reach from under 0-2 per cent. 1 to 
over 5-0 per cent., 2 that is, from about one in five hundred to about one in 
twenty. One estimate thus recognises twenty -five times as many defectives as 
another. Upon what scale is an education authority, such as that for the 
County of London, to provide, when one calculation declares that, between 
the ages contemplated, 22,500 children will be defective, and another only 
900 ? 

The incongruity springs from various sources. It arises in part from 
incompatible views as to what degree of unintelligence constitutes mental 
deficiency. The lower estimates doubtless envisage only those cases that 
can be regarded as definitely pathological, cases such as are encountered 
most abundantly in institutions and asylums. The higher estimates tend 
to sweep in all who would benefit by instruction in special schools, regardless 
of their ultimate recognition in after. life as defectives in the legal sense. 
Partly, again, the discrepancies ensue from an unrecognised difference or 
opposition between alternative paths of approach. Some investigators have 
begun by examining first the defectives. The brightest of these they have 
regarded as indicating the line of partition. Others have started with 
normals, and have taken the limit to be marked by the dullest normal who 
could without aid just earn his own subsistence. Either course, divorced 
from its complementary, ignores the broad margin of overlapping individuals. 
In assuming that the dullest normal outside an institution will rank next 
above the brightest defective, within there lurks a simple but seductive 

( J ) In the United States Census Report on the Insane and Feebleminded in Institutions (1910) a special 
estimate was obtained from the public authorities in Massachusetts which included not only defectives in 
institutions, but also those found among the general population. On this basis it is affirmed that " if the 
number of feebleminded in proportion to the total population was the same for the entire United States . . . 
the total number of feebleminded would be over 200,000." This amounts to about 0-2 per cent. It is added 
that not one-tenth of these are being cared for in special institutions. Similarly, Dr. Cornell, the Director 
of Medical Inspection for the Philadelphia Public Schools, avers that " the number of evidently feeble- 
minded above the age of six years may be said to be one to every five hundred of the population. These 
figures are conservative and have been accepted by experts for years." Estimates at Vineland give rather 
over 0-3 per cent. ; the Departmental Committee of the Board of Education (1898), about 1 per cent. — an 
estimate referring to children only and excluding ineducable imbeciles ; the British Royal Commission (1904), 
rather over 0-3 per cent, in the general population, and 0-73 per cent, among school children only — the 
latter varying from 0-2 per cent, in Durham to 1-9 per cent, in Dublin. Subsequent returns by school medical 
officers to the Board of Education average about 0-5 per cent. Karl Pearson (1914), on the basis of various 
statistical returns, suggests " something between 1 and 2 per cent, among school children." 

( a ) This is Binet's figure (Mentally Defective Children, tr. Drummond, p. 8). He alleges that the pro- 
portion of defectives found in France by the Ministerial Commissions (barely 1 per cent.) is " evidently far 
too small " ; and cites " a special and most careful enquiry at Bordeaux " as yielding 5-17 per cent. He 
adds, " Probably the percentage is somewhere in the neighbourhood of five." In a publication of the United 
States Bureau of Education (1911) three eminent psychologists— J. H. Van Sickle, L. Witmer, and L. P. Ayres 
— give 4 per cent, as the proportion of feebleminded children. 



164 

fallacy. Freedom and segregation are contingent upon a multitude of 
factors, of which intelligence, though the most vital, is but one : the duller 
"normal " may have been saved by a benign environment ; the brighter 
" defective " may have been ruined by defect of character. There are thus 
two thresholds, not one threshold. The frontier is crossed at different points 
according as we travel from below upwards or downwards from above. With 
the distribution shown in Figure 24, the " ascending procedure " — to borrow 
a term from the psychophysicist — would locate the borderline at about 
— 2 S.D., perhaps even closer to the average ; the " descending procedure " 
at —3 S.D., perhaps below. 

Between these two landmarks, namely, twice and thrice the standard 
deviation, lie the boundaries advocated by most investigators. Binet 
himself looked for a retardation of two years at eight or less than eight, and 
three years at nine or over. This would be equivalent to a mental ratio 
between 75 and 66 per cent., and to a deviation between 21-2 and 28-4 S.D. 
In a normal distribution such limits would cut off 1*70 per cent, and 0-23 
per cent, respectively. Subsequent revisions at first leant towards one or 
other of these two extremes, namely, a retardation of either one-quarter or 
one-third of age ; but later more often favoured a compromise of 30 per cent- 
Stern, however, in first introducing the conception of a "mental ratio," 
proposed a retardation of 20 per cent., which, with the present distribution,, 
would correspond to —1*70 S.D., and cut off 4-46 per cent, from the normal 
group, normally distributed. On the other hand, Pearson and Jaederholm r 
whose statistical analysis is for method one of the most sound, and for con- 
clusions one of the most cautious, demand evidence far more pronounced. 
Discussing results obtained with a special modification of the Binet-Simon 
scale, they write that "until the child is something like four years in arrear 
of its physical age, it is not possible to assert dogmatically on the basis of the 
most scientific test. . . ., that it is feebleminded." With their data four 
years answers to — 4 S.D. Such a borderline would intercept "less than 
J per cent, in the normal population " ; indeed, in a population normally 
distributed, a proportion much more minute. Here, however, the writers 
are biassed almost exclusively towards the second of the two procedures. 
They would hesitate to consider a child defective, if he can be matched by 
the dullest among the normal group. 

Now, in theory a normally distributed group has no lower limit. The 
larger the group examined, the duller will be the dullest child. In a group 
of infinite size the dullest normal would be infinitely dull. Similarly, wiih 
a distribution like that found for the defectives, there is no reason to regard 
the upper limit as abrupt or definitely fixed. A curve fitted to it is as likely 
to be asymptotic as to cut the base-line. Nevertheless, simplicity demands, 
to indicate the line of separation, a single point upon the abscissa, and a 
single ordinate erected at that point. What line, what point, are to be chosen T 

The Theoretical Line of Division. 

I suggest that the most natural cleavage between the two distributions is 
that indicated by the point where the two curves intersect. A notched stick snaps 
at its narrowest part. And the two groups may be most easily severed by 
cutting down in the angle between the two main bulks. Here, if the over- 
lapping branches are in reality distinct, the splicing will be thinnest. 

In discussing the mental differences between other human groups — for 
example, between the two sexes, or between two consecutive age-groups — 
I have already urged the importance of this point of intersection. Where 
the values for the averages and standard deviations of two normally 



165 

distributed groups are known, the theoretical point of intersection can speedily 
be ascertained by a formula derived from the classical equation for the 
normal curve. 1 

For the normal and defective groups the point of intersection, when 
thus calculated, falls at about —2-8 S.D. below the median for the normals. 
Mathematically determined, therefore, this is the observed line of demarca- 
tion, deduced from actual practice. At the age of eight last birthday — the 
age at which the largest number of candidates are presented for the statutory 
examination — a retardation of 2-8 years corresponds with a mental ratio of 
67-1 per cent. The practical effect, therefore, of the London organisation is 
to segregate the child of the special school from the child of the ordinary elementary 
at a level of intelligence equivalent to a retardation of about one-third of the 
child's age. In our imaginary population of ten thousand this limit would 
mark off an additional twenty-seven of the " normal " group as fit for a 
special school — possibly rather more had the whole number been actually 
tested ; forty-one special school children it would adjudge fit for the ordinary 
elementary school, so far, at least, as tested intelligence is concerned. 

In educational ability the point of intersection between normals and 
defectives, when similarly determined, lies at —3-3 S.D., that is, below the 
point of intersection for intelligence, by about one-half the standard devia- 
tion. For educational ability, however, the standard deviation is much smaller 
in relation to age. Hence, in terms of the ratio of retardation to age the 
borderline for educational ability differs but little from that for intelligence, 
being 32 per cent, of age, or rather less than one-third. 

Such, or nearly such, is the actual line of separation. But to identify 
the actual fine with the intended line is hardly permissible. The upper end 
of the defective group comprises individuals who have passed the scrutiny 
of three or four tribunals — the teacher, the school doctor or the psychologist, 
the certifying medical officer, and, in some cases, the medical officer inspect- 
ing for re-transference to the ordinary school. On the other hand, the lower 
end of the group, nominally normal, consists largely of individuals left among 
undoubted normals for reasons purely accidental. Some have evaded the 
notice, or escaped the sentence, of one or other of these examiners. A few, 
though duly noted and duly sentenced, are awaiting accommodation in some 
overcrowded special school. Hence, the high-grade defective always indicates 
an uttered verdict ; the low-grade normal merely the absence of a verdict. 
It follows that at the examinations where these judgments are delivered the 
retardation that is accepted as qualifying for the special school is less 
than a consideration of the low-grade normal might convey. The intended 

( 2 ) The formula used is the following : — 

^ Jfr.'-^o-, K /{**+2 CV-<V) log e ^} 
<r£— <r 2 a 
Where x = the distance of the point of intersection from the left-hand curve; d = the distance between 
the two curves, N t , N a , °"i and Cj= as usual the areas of the curve and their standard deviations. 

The formula is based on a proof kindly supplied to me by Professor Nunn for the slightly simpler case 
in which N t = N 2 . The formula follows directly from the fact that y, the ordinate at x common to both curves, 

%2 8/2 

N t 20"j 2 N 2 2C 2 

= (1)o "i s/w e and (2) ff a Jjfr e " ' 

by cancelling sjzir and taking logarithms throughout to base e. Where Ni = N 2 . and in addition "i^^a 
x obviously = § d. 

In applying the formula to curves that are moderately asymmetrical, I would suggest using only the 
intersecting halves, is,., the lower half of the upper curve and the upper half of the lower curve, and assuming 
these halves to be portions of normal curves whose averages coincide respectively with the medians observed, 
and then recalculating the standard deviations. The measurement obtained by the formula can be checked 
graphically by plotting the two curves from tables for the probability integral in the usual way. 



166 

line of demarcation is, therefore, nearer to the general average than the 
actual line. It wavers like the unsteady needle of a compass ; oscillating, 
for the most part, according to the personal views of each examiner, between 
— 2-5 and —2-0 S.D., points which correspond to mental ratios of 70 and 
75 per cent. 

We are thus again thrown back upon the quicksand of subjective judg- 
ment. As a conceivable avenue of escape, I would advance, tentatively and 
to begin with, the following postulates. 

First, mental deficiency must be treated as an administrative rather than 
as a psychological concept. As the relevant statutes are interpreted in practice, 
mental defectives comprise an indiscriminate assortment of heterogeneous 
types — social failures, school failures, failures in virtue of undeveloped 
intelligence, failures in virtue of unstable temperament. 

Unstable persons, whether children or adults, occasion no small per- 
plexity. Where the instability is a ground of social failure or a source of 
social menace, it may, with some plausibility, be held that the unstable 
person should be dealt with under that clause in the Act of 1913 which relates 
to " moral imbeciles "■ — ■" persons who from an early age display some 
permanent mental defect coupled with strong vicious or criminal propensities 
on which punishment has had little or no deterrent effect." But in the 
interpretation of this definition magistrates and others differ greatly. 
Viewed from the narrow loophole of psychology, the whole conception of 
"moral imbecility" wears a dubious legitimacy; even in the wider field 
of daily practice, if " mental defect " be construed as referring to defect in 
intelligence alone, and if incorrigibility have to be proved for each individual 
case by actually administering punishment to test whether it can have 
"little or no deterrent effect," then the clause in question is of small utility 
and may work much harm. If, on the other hand, "mental" be defined 
not as the adjective of intelligence, but as the adjective of mind, and so 
taken to cover defect of temperament as well as defect of intelligence, then 
unstable persons, whose ability may be nearly or quite average, may yet, 
in virtue of their need for care and control, be dealt with as " feebleminded " 
rather than as " moral imbeciles." With this interpretation, to disprove 
deficiency in intelligence is not necessarily to disprove mental deficiency in all 
its forms ; x and the application of the Binet-Simon scale would, for these 
cases, have but a negative purport. 

Cases of the unstable type account for some of the overlapping in in- 
telligence between the ordinary and the special schools. Those, however, 
who are transferred to special schools on the ground, primarily or solely, of 
instability are comparatively rare. In this memorandum, therefore, dis- 
cussion may be restricted to those who are defective, primarily or solely, in 
intelligence. 

With these the statutes provide a further difficulty. Two definitions 
are offered, one for children and another for adults. Among adults the 
deficiency must be "so pronounced that they require care, supervision, and 
control for their own protection or for that of others." Among children it 
is sufficient that they shall be " incapable of receiving proper benefit from 
the instruction in the ordinary public elementary schools." The latter 
definition embraces a far larger proportion of the population than the 
former. This leads us to a second postulate : the line of demarcation for 
school children must be enunciated separately from the line of demarcation for 
adults. 

(M I have argued at greater length in favour of this highly debatable conclusion in discussing the classifi- 
cation of mental defectives. Studies in Mental Inefficiency, pp. 50 ei seg. 



167 



The Borderline for Children. 

Let us approach, first of all, the case of the defective child. As it stands, 
the statutory definition is too vague and indirect to be translated at once 
into terms of mental age. In some districts an inability to receive proper 
benefit from " the instruction in the ordinary school " would include the 
dull and backward, for whom, as is now slowly becoming recognised, 
special educational provision is urgently needed, though seldom found. In 
more progressive areas "the instruction in the ordinary school" might 
comprehend such special provision ; and here many children, who might 
otherwise be transferred to a special (M.D.) school, would undoubtedly 
receive proper benefit from instruction in the backward classes of the ordinary school, 
and at the same time escape the unmerited stigma of mental deficiency. Between 
these two alternatives the policy of different local authorities and the 
practice of different certifying officers tend, as is well known, to fluctuate 
widely. 

The variations from one local authority to another are, in present 
circumstances at any rate, all but inevitable. But under the same local 
authority the standard should in justice be the same throughout. From 
this follows yet a further postulate : for immediate practical purposes the only 
satisfactory definition of mental deficiency is a percentage definition based on 
the amount of existing accommodation. 1 If in the special schools of London 
there is accommodation for only 1-5 per cent., then to adopt a borderline 
which, followed out consistently, would cut off nearly 2 per cent, is plainly 
indefensible. The effect of a personal standard, at variance with available 
provision, can only be that less urgent cases of a higher grade that chance to 
be transferred at an earlier date ivill forestall more urgent cases of a lower grade 
that are presented for examination later. This is no rare occurrence. Where 
a teacher or a doctor adopts some high standard of deficiency, whether 
borrowed from a French or American authority or based privately upon his 
generous view of the children's needs, then sooner or later his milder candi- 
dates are found usurping the room of more necessitous candidates passed 
by a colleague who adopts a lower standard. Such lack of co-ordination is 
manifestly unjust. There should be one weight and one measure. To no 
a priori line of demarcation can any inviolable cogency attach. This or 
that percentage, this or that degree of deviation, is to be accepted solely 
on the humble ground of practical expediency. Once accepted, it should 
be complied with universally. Its merit lies not in its absolute character, 
which is arbitrary, but in its uniform observance, which is essential. Whether 
a pound is worth two hundred and forty pence or two hundred and fifty 
matters but little. But the change returned should be the same in West- 
minster as it is in the Isle of Dogs. 

The method of defining mental deficiency by means of the percentage 
of accommodation available has already been illustrated in a previous 

t 1 ) The ultra-logical may perhaps be tempted to deduce from my definition the corollary that areas 
which are without special schools must tie equally free from mental deficiency: no provision, no defectives. 
And, when allissaid, "for immediate practical purposes " the conclusion is surely sound. With future practical 
measures and even with theoretical prolegomena I am not for the moment concerned. Were those my 
immediate interest, I should, of course, begin by discussing what degree of social inefficiency or of anti- 
social conduct seemed to require administrative provision, and how far those characteristics could be 
attributable to psychological causes. 

I should add that my formulation of a borderline holds good in the first instance merely for 
average conditions in an industrial area, such as that which I have been studying. Where environment and 
stock are better or worse, different figures would unquestionably be obtained. In the near future we shall 
doubtless need separate statements for rural areas and residential areas, as distinguished from highly indus- 
trialised towns, and perhaps even for the weaker sex as distinguished from men and boys. 



168 

memorandum when discussing the line of demarcation in educational ability. l 
It was there suggested that, before a child is nominated by the head teacher 
for the statutory examination for admission to a special (M.D.) school, he 
should be proved to be retarded in educational attainments by at least 
27 per cent., roughly one-quarter, of his chronological age. At the statutory 
examination itself, were educational attainments the sole criterion, a yet 
greater retardation would be required. But educational attainments are 
not the sole criterion. For educational retardation may be due, not neces- 
sarily to mental deficiency, but to other factors of a very special kind — 
absence from school, ill-health, or specific educational defect. Where such 
conditions operate, a child may be gravely retarded in educational attain- 
ments and yet prove average or above average in natural ability ; he may 
in school progress seem mentally deficient, and in practical intelligence 
prove unquestionably normal. 

Passing over, then, for the moment those rarer and more peculiar cases 
distinguished by defect in character and temperament, the prime factor, the 
essential criterion, in mental deficiency is retardation in intelligence. And, 
with the same reservation only, it ensues, that, since in London special 
schools there is accommodation for 1-51 per cent, of the population during 
the ages at which defectives are admitted, within this county the mentally 
defective child is to be defined as one who for intelligence ranks among the lowest 
1J per cent, of the school population of the same age. 

Between the ages of seven and fourteen, out of the conjoint population, 
ordinary and special school, the lowest 1-5 per cent, will embrace all those 
who fall below a deviation of —2-6 S.D. This is equivalent to a retardation 
of 30-6 per cent, of age, or a mental ratio of 69-4. Accordingly, to be con- 
sidered mentally deficient on the ground of undeveloped intelligence, a child, 
when tested by the Binet-Simon scale as here revised, must be backward by at least — 

2 years at the age of 6 to 7, 
2 1 years at the age of 8 to 9, 

3 years at the age of 9 to 10, 

3 J years at the age of 12, 

4 years at the age of 13 to 14, 
and, generally, by at least three-tentlis of his age. 

The precise borderline, calculated for each age upon this basis, is shown, 
in terms both of mental age and of the number of tests to be passed, in 
Table XVIII. 

The borderline is taken as 70 per cent, of the chronological age. The 
test designated as crucial for any particular age is that test which in 
the order for defectives 2 most nearly corresponds with the borderline as 
expressed by the number of tests passed. At the age of six and a half, for 
instance, the borderline is 15-8 tests ; a child who at that age can perform 
fifteen or sixteen tests should be deemed normal. The fifteenth test in the 
order for defectives is naming four colours ; it is seventeenth in the order 
for normals. A typical borderline case, therefore — though cases truly 
typical are the exception, not the rule— should pass all the tests up to this 
point, then break down and pass no more. At times, however, the test thus 
indicated occupies in the order for normals a position widely different from 
that which it holds in the order for defectives. Reciting the months, for 
example, which in the former list is thirty-seventh, is in the latter list forty- 
second ; in the former it is below the borderline for age ten, and in the 
latter above the borderline for age eleven. In such instances the test most 

t 1 ) Loc. cit., p. 43. 

( 2 ) The test which corresponds to the borderline in the order for normals is shown above in 
Schedule I., pp. 19-23. 



169 



nearly equivalent in the average or combined order is added or substituted. 
A child that can perform the crucial test (and, in addition, of course, all those 
preceding it in the order for defectives) is to be regarded as normal. The 
decisive criterion, however, is not the nature of the particular tests attempted, 
crucial or other— there is no one litmus test for deficiency at any age : the 
point to note in this connection is simply the total number of the tests suc- 
cessfully accomplished. For a nominal normality this total should at least 
attain the figure shown under the borderline as stated in terms of tests. 

TABLE XVIII 
Line of Demarcation between Normals and Defectives. 



Chronological 
Age. 


Norms in 


Borderline 


Borderline 




Terms of 


in Mental 


in Terms of 


Crucial Test. 


Tests. 


Age. 


Tests. 




3-5 


8-5 


2-5 


3-0 


Sex. 


4-5 


15 


3-2 


7-0 


4 Pennies. 


5-5 


25 


3-9 


10-5 


Comparing Faces. 


6-5 


33 


4-6 


15-8 


4 Colours; (10 syllables ? ). 


7-5 


38 


5-3 


22-6 


Transcription ; (Diamond ? ). 


8-5 


43 


6-0 


31-0 


5 Numbers ; (Missing Features ?). 


9-5 


46-5 


6-7 


33-8 


Pence and Halfpence ; (Differ- 
ences ?). 


10-5 


50-5 


7-4 


37-4 


Counting 20 to 1; (Change?). 


11-5 


54-5 


8-1 


41-4 


6 Numbers. 


12-5 


57 


8-8 


44-2 


5 Weights. 


13-5 


59 


9-5 


46-5 


Sentence Building (2). 


14-5 


61-5 


10-2 


49-0 


Memory Drawing ; (Absurdities ?). 


15-5 


64 


10-9 


52-5 


60 Words ; (7 Numbers ? ). 



On referring to Table IV. it will be seen that in terms of tests the border- 
line here advocated coincides closely enough with the point at which the 
number of defectives passing the tests begins to taper rather rapidly. In 
age six, for example, after the sixteenth test the percentages drop almost 
at a blow from over 30 per cent, to 25 per cent, or less ; and with other 
ages a fall equally steep is to be noticed near the level of the test assigned. 

Expressed in terms of standard deviations, or in terms of mental ages, 
of mental ratios, and of mental retardations, a line of demarcation can have 
but a derivative significance, a second-hand validity. Such a figure would 
vary widely according to the conditions under which it were obtained. This 
difficulty has already been illustrated in the previous memorandum upon 
educational ability. When, as was there observed, the standard deviation is 
calculated from the normal population only, the multiple of the standard 
deviation required to cut off a given percentage will differ greatly from that 
required when the standard deviation is calculated from a population in- 
cluding both normals and defectives. Nor is this the only ambiguity. A 
bias, trifling and perhaps imperceptible, towards asymmetry in the form of 
distribution will introduce a large alteration into the proportion cut off from 
the extreme end of the tail by one and the same multiple of the standard 
deviation. Further, with similar tests of different abilities, and with different 
tests of the same ability, the standard deviation, as measured against the 
differences between the age-averages, is as shifting as a weather-vane. Re- 
duced to terms of mental years, or translated into the ratio of mental years to 
actual age, the borderline delimiting the children of special schools from those 
of the ordinary elementary yields, as we have remarked, one figure for educa- 
tional ability and another for intelligence ; and for intelligence it yields 
figures different again when measured by the Binet-Simon scale and when 



170 

measured by means of other tests. A borderline defective with a ratio of 
70 per cent., when examined by the Binet-Simon scale, will have a ratio of 
but 50 per cent, when tested by graded inferences ; x at the age of fourteen 
his common sense as revealed by the former is equal to that of a child of 
nearly ten, but his reasoning ability as revealed by the latter is equal to that 
of a child of only seven. A definition of feeblemindedness expressed, like 
that put forward by Binet, in terms of mental retardation, or converted, like 
that proposed by Stern, into terms of a mental ratio, presupposes for children 
a fixed and reliable standardisation of age-norms, and for adults a recognised 
limit of intellectual growth. No such age-norms have been worked out ; no 
such intellectual limit has yet been measured. When both have been secured, 
each will still require to be perpetually ratified, and frequently readjusted, 
as time goes on. 

From all these uncertainties the percentage borderline is virtually 
exempt. It does not depend upon the mode of calculation. It varies but 
little with the type of test employed. It presupposes neither an age-scale 
for the growing child, nor a mental maximum for the stationary adult. What- 
ever test be adopted, however the borderline be expressed, the same indi- 
viduals, and therefore the same number of individuals, should be selected. 
This is essential. Evidently the requirement may best be satisfied by a 
definition stating the proportion of the number selected to the number in 
the total population from which the selection is drawn. The percentage 
formulation, therefore, is to be regarded as basal. It has, however, one 
drawback. At different points of the scale equal percentage differences 
denote equal differences in ability only where the form of distribution is 
rectilinear. With curvilinear distributions — those, for example, represented 
by normal and moderately asymmetrical curves — the percentages, as already 
noted, 2 must first be reduced to terms of the variability of the group, and 
expressed as a multiple of the quartile 3 or of the standard deviation, before 
the units of measurement can be manipulated as equivalent throughout. 
Then, and then only, will the scale employed be logically uniform, and the 
figures obtained be arithmetically comparable. Nevertheless, statements 
in terms of such units, like statements in terms of age, ratio, or retardation, 
must be viewed simply as a device, though unquestionably the most scientific 
device, for elucidating the original percentage definition, for endowing it 
with a convenient graduation for theoretical purposes and a concrete inter- 
pretation for practical. Such statements are not themselves fundamental. 

The Borderline for Adults. 

These, then, are the methods available for defining mental deficiency 
in children, and these their several merits. With adults a different standard 
is necessary. For the sake of demonstration suppose, first, that for adults 
the line of demarcation were the same as that for children, namely, a per- 
centage of 1-5 and a mental ratio of 70 ; and assume, as is commonly done, 
that intelligence measured by the Binet-Simon scale advances but little 
after the age of sixteen ; 4 then, as the lower limit of adult normality, we 
should have a retardation of about five years and a mental age between 
eleven and twelve. The limit thus deduced would be impracticably high. 
He whose ability is inadequate for the intellectual exactions of the school 
may yet adjust himself without catastrophe to the practical requirements 
of after life. Hence, a lower and more lenient borderline is permissible 
for the mature. But, curiously enough, the accepted pronouncements of 

I 1 ) See below, Appendix IV, rp. 239-242. ( 2 ) See above, p. 138. 

( 3 ) For the definition of " quartile " see p. 309 ; for that of " standard deviation," p. 265. 

( 4 ) See note on the upper limit of mental growth, p. 244. 



171 

American psychologists dictate a line of demarcation that is higher and a 
standard that is more severe. 

Following a scheme proposed by Goddard, the American Association 
for the Study of the Feebleminded placed the upper limit of mental deficiency 
between the mental ages of twelve and thirteen. Unquestionably for imme- 
diate practical adoption in this country such a standard is far too lofty 
and sweeping. It seems certainly higher than Binet's criterion. Binet's 
view, however, is only indirectly implied. For the diagnosis of high-grade 
adult defectives he selected some half-dozen crucial tests— weights, difficult 
questions, sentence building, definitions (abstract), picture (interpretation), 
and rhymes. These belong to ages IX. to XII. The other tests from these 
age-groups, defective adults, he thought, might pass, in virtue of mere 
memory and experience. Even if for all these more mechanical tests we 
accord them complete success, the highest grades could in theory barely 
obtain a mental age of twelve, probably in practice not that of eleven. 
Among the French defectives actually tested by Binet and Simon " the best 
endowed," we are told, " did not surpass the normal level of nine or ten." 
These earlier statements, however, are not devoid of ambiguity. More 
recently, in addressing the English Eugenics Society, Dr. Simon has expressed 
a clear and definite recommendation. "Provisionally," he says, "it may 
be proposed to fix at nine years the upper limit of mental debility." In 
sending forward for notification by the local authority the names of particular 
children as they leave the special school, London head teachers adopt by 
implication a limit lower still. At the calendar age of fifteen or sixteen 
children are rarely nominated — at least, on the ground of defective intelli- 
gence alone — unless their mental age is below that of eight. 

My own experience tallies with this lower figure. In testing random 
samples of working men and youths, both at settlements in London and 
Liverpool and in rural districts of Warwickshire, I have met numerous 
individuals managing the affairs of their household and discharging the 
requirements of their occupation, who yet could not pass sufficient tests to 
attain even a mental age of eight. In a rural parish numbering about 
seven hundred persons — a hamlet which has a title to interest as the home of 
Shakespeare's grandfather before the family migrated to Stratford-upon- 
Avon — I have made repeated studies among inhabitants of the present 
generation by the Binet and other tests. Including adults and children 
alike, the average mental ratio for the native population is 81-6, the standard 
deviation being 15-7. The highest ratio is 112, obtained by the son of the 
village innkeeper. 1 The lowest is 38, obtained by a mongoloid girl. But 
many of the farm labourers in the district, like many of the dock labourers 
in Liverpool, contrive successfully to work and live with a mental ratio of 
little over 50. In towns, as well as in the country, I have found many a 
domestic servant of the poorer type who could pass with difficulty only 
tests for the age of seven. Doubtless, in domestic service, as on a country 
farm, the course of life is generally 2 smooth, and the conditions of existence 
unusually favourable. They demand no keen sagacity. They impose no 
strenuous exertions. They offer no irresistible temptations, and violate no 

(') To limit the investigation to natives, those only were tested who were actually attending, or had 
actually attended, the village school. The family of the schoolmaster, however, was excepted. One of his 
sons,, who commenced education at this school, gained subsequently a science scholarship at the University 
of Cambridge, and later a lectureship in engineering at the University of Oxford. This family, however, was 
an immigrant family. On the other hand, in preceding generations the brightest individuals in the village 
had largely emigrated to the neighbouring industrial towns ; and the remainder had greatly intermarried. 

( 2 ) The qualification is important. Among the cases of vice and crime described below a disproportion- 
ately large number of the older low-grade female delinquents had been in domestic service ; and, in not a 
few instances, had encountered unusual temptations. 



172 

cherished hopes. To wash the plates or sweep the rooms, to till a field or tend 
a horse, are simple routine offices such as can be mastered by the intelligence 
of a child of nine ; and the eye of a mistress or the gossip of a village is 
sufficient protection against drifting into vice or lapsing into crime. 

In the history of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, it is related how a 
foolish barbarian once attempted to fly. He ascended an eminence, flourished 
his wings, sprang from the edge, and at once dropped headlong into a lake. 
But the pinions, it is added, which failed to sustain him through the air, 
sufficed to bear him up when he reached the surface of the water. The 
episode was written as an allegory ; and may not inaptly typify the fate of 
the defective at large. In a thin and treacherous atmosphere, at the difficult 
and dizzy altitude where highly civilised men, assisted by the newest 
machinery of a highly civilised community, alone can securely travel, and 
alone should venture to soar, there the simpleton, less fortunately equipped 
and oblivious to his ill-fortune, must crash instantly to ruin. But if he 
lights upon a humbler medium, dense enough and yet elastic enough, more 
buoyant and yet less variable, he may contrive, though quite mechanically, 
to support himself unaided. If in one milieu he falls, in the other he may 
float. He is there, as we say, in his element. 

It is a truth which needs some insistence, because so often overlooked. 
A defective in a complex environment may not be defective in a simple. 
And the converse is no less certain. Favourable surroundings are not always 
to be presumed ; and, when actually present, may not perennially endure. 
Hence, it is advisable to watch over these milder cases lest they come to 
some high crisis ; and to be ready to rescue them should they slide into 
dangerous predicaments. With these cases, then, supervision is always 
expedient, though segregation is not usually essential, 

Below a mental age of eight the matter is different. In this country 
such individuals become almost invariably parasites. This, therefore, is the 
provisional limit I propose. As accommodation increases, as public opinion 
advances, the limit will doubtless rise. 1 

Those accustomed to the higher borderlines commonly formulated for 
adults may be reminded that a mental level of 8-0 years, according to the 
London age-assignments, is equivalent to an age of eight and a half or nine, 
according to earlier allocations. Out of the sixty-five tests a normal adult 
should perform at least forty-one. The borderline tests, therefore, are those 
numbered 40 to 43 in the order for the defectives (Table IV.) — counting 
backwards, repeating six numbers, reading the prescribed passage and 
remembering at least two items, and writing the prescribed words from 
dictation. As these and the preceding tests (months, date, change, coins) 
are primarily tests of acquirements either in school or out of school, the 
failures and the successes of a borderline case are usually scattered with 
some irregularity about this region. Hence, as a rule, an examinee will not 
be accounted normal unless he can pass one or more of the succeeding tests, 
namely, arranging the five weights, building two sentences from three words, 
interpreting the pictures, drawing the two designs, or defining concrete 
objects by class. 2 

If, with most other writers, we take the limit of mental development, 
when measured by the Binet-Simon scale, to he near age XVI., a mental 
age of VIII. is equivalent among adults to a mental ratio of 50. Owing to 
the slight tendency of the ratio to decline, the future adult defective may 
perhaps during school life show a ratio a little above this figure. Two reserva- 
tions, however, can hardly be too often emphasised : first, no individual 

C) See note, p. 245. ( 2 ) Binet's selection is somewhat similar (see above, p. 171). He states, however, 
that some of his institution patients could pass several of these tests, though none could pass three. 



173 

has a flat mental age or ratio, identical for every kind of mental function or 
for every type of mental test ; and, secondly, his mental age or ratio is but 
one of many symptoms to be weighed before his case can be finally rated 
as either normal or defective. 1 With adult cases, indeed, comparatively 
little weight will be attached in everyday practice to mere mental age. 
Points of a more practical order — the consideration of physique, of tempera- 
ment, of home surroundings — will nearly always intervene to tip the balance, 
before the question of certifying the patient is finally decided. 2 But the 
theoretical acceptance of an ideal borderline — to be applied in practice only 
where other circumstances are neutral or negative — may lead, as I hope, to 
a broader uniformity in general standards. 

If the whole of the adult population were distributed in a manner 
analogous to the distribution of ordinary and special school children taken 
as a single group, a mental ratio of 50 would cut off the lowest four or five 
per mille. According to the investigations of the Royal Commission, between 
three and four per mille of the total population are mentally deficient. Of 
these, only one half are during adult life accommodated in institutions, and 
one quarter are permanently provided for neither by the public authorities 
nor by private friends. On the other hand, the rate of mortality is far 
higher among the mentally deficient ; and, therefore, in proportion to 
normals their number must rapidly diminish with increasing age. Hence, if 
the percentage for adults, obtained irrespective of age, be reduced to a 
standard age, comparable with the basis adopted for school children — for 
example, age sixteen — the observed figure would be once more enlarged. In 
the long run it would probably rise to at least one-half per cent. Now, it 
would appear that the cases enumerated by the Royal Commission compre- 
hend only those requiring permanent provision and complete control, equiva- 
lent to that of, though not necessarily obtained in, an institution ; and 
exclude persons of a higher grade who can earn a living and attend to simple 
daily duties with passable success. Thus interpreted, therefore, the two 
estimates seem roughly to agree. 

These various considerations converge toward one conclusion. From 
the standpoint of their adult needs, the mentally deficient children accom- 
modated in special schools comprise three distinguishable grades. First, 
there are those whose intelligence will suffice for them to manage their 
practical affairs, though it does not suffice for them to profit intellectually 
by the instruction in the ordinary school. Secondly, there are those who, 
in addition to special instruction during childhood, will in after life need 
supervision or guardianship although in an even and benign environment 
their intelligence is sufficient for them to be allowed their individual liberty. 
Thirdly, there are those whose intelligence is so deeply defective that they 
will be unable to support themselves, unless housed in an institution, estab- 
lished in a colony, or provided with equivalent protection by their relatives 
or friends. Among the older children tested by me about 30 per cent, fell 

(*) The curious may compare the borderline above proposed with those formulated by other investiga- 
tors. In contrast to the present limiting ratio of 50, that is, half normal intelligence, Stern, who first introduced 
the concept of a mental ratio, assigned to the "feeble-minded" — the highest grade of deficiency — a " three- 
quarter " intelligence, with an upper limit of 80 ; to the second grade, namely, " imbecility," a " scant two- 
thirds intelligence," with an upper limit of 70. An adult with a mental ratio of 55 would be adjudged normal 
by the present standard, but a defective of the lowest grade— "an idiot" — by the logical consequences of 
Stern's. One of the most recent revisions— the Stanford Revision — considers 70 to 80 to be borderline 
deficiency, classifiable as dull or as defective according to circumstances, 70 to be the upper limit for definite 
feeble-mindedness, 50 for imbeciles, and 20 or 25 for idiots. None of these investigators, however, formulate 
separate ratios for adults and for children. Indeed, Stern himself applies the ratio neither to idiots nor to 
persons whose development has ceased ; and among the mentally deficient he considers development to 
cease at the mental age of nine. 

( 2 ) A summary of what may be termed supplementary sources of evidence, and some notes as to their 
significance, will be found in Studies in Mental Inefficiency, loc. cit. sup., pp. 76-77. 



174 

into the last category, and about 38 per cent, into the first ; the remnant, 
about 32 per cent., into the intermediate. Such figures suggest that the 
entire population of the special school may be split into three nearly equal 
categories : the lowest 0-5 per cent, of the whole population, normal and 
defective, at the ages in question, are likely to form institution cases ; 
the next 0-5 per cent, supervision eases ; the next 0-5 per cent, purely 
school cases. In mental ratios these percentages indicate the following 
rough lines of demarcation : below 50, institution cases ; between 50 and 60, 
supervision cases ; between 60 and 70, special school cases. With adults, and 
with adolescents over sixteen, these limits correspond to the mental ages of 
eight, nine and a half, and eleven respectively. 

Whether the children who are classed as mentally defective during their 
school career only, should be stigmatised as mentally defective at all, remains 
a vexed and delicate problem. In general intelligence they are, as a rule, 
weak. But defect connotes something more than simple weakness. It 
implies a weakness so profound as to demand special administrative pro- 
vision. By this standard such cases are defective in scholastic ability alone, 
not in general intelligence. They need educational provision, but not social 
provision. Defect does not characterise their minds as a whole. Hence, 
they might, with greater justice, be designated not mentally defective, but 
educationally defective. 

Should such cases, then, be transferred to a special school ? So long 
as there is no other provision made for them it appears not only advisable, 
but compulsory, to commit them thither. Nevertheless, their anchorage is 
with the normal child rather than with those defectives who will still be 
accounted defectives even in after life. When the dull and backward are 
recognised as requiring definite educational provision, a larger proportion of 
the special school cases will doubtless be accommodated in the special classes in 
the ordinary school rather than associated with those ivhose future lies for ever 
in an institution. 

The Borderline for Supernormality. 

The poverty of the Binet- Simon tests for higher mental ages renders it 
idle to apply them in central and secondary schools as they have been 
applied in special schools for the defective. But at earlier ages the scale is 
not unfitted for detecting supernormality. The line of demarcation, how- 
ever, has to be deduced indirectly. Evidence of two kinds is available : 
first, from results in the Binet-Simon tests obtained among younger children 
subsequently transferred to central or secondary schools ; secondly, from 
results in the graded reasoning tests, which are more suited for the detection 
of supernormal ability among older children. Upon this basis the following 
borderlines have been provisionally established : a mental ratio above 115 or 
120 indicates central school ability at least ; and a mental ratio above 130 
or 135 scholarship ability. Some elasticity in the standard is necessitated 
by the progressive decrease, manifested by the higher ages, in deviations 
toward the upper end of the scale. The lower figures (115 and 130 re- 
spectively) are more appropriate to the higher ages, and the higher figures 
(120 and 135) to the middle ages. A child, therefore, of seven and a half 
with a mental age of ten is likely to make a successful scholarship candidate. 

A mental ratio above 150 is singularly rare ; and hitherto I have never, 
either in this research or in any other based upon the Binet-Simon scale, 
obtained a ratio over 160 from a child in a public elementary school. 1 

I 1 ) In a private school I have recently found a boy of seven with a mental ratio of 190. Dr. Rusk in 
Scotland and Dr. Hollingworth in America have each described a precocity of the same order {ChM Study, 
X. i. 21 ; J. Applied Psych. I. 101). Petzoldt defines a gifted child as one who can accomplish two years' 
work in one (compare Galton p. 13 sup.) ; and is sanguine enough to believe that 10 per cent, of German 
school children could achieve this progress ! 



175 



6. THE RELATIONS BETWEEN MENTAL ABILITY AND 
EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENTS. 

The Various Influences Affecting the Tests. 

A child's proficiency in the Binet-Simon tests is the complex resultant 
of a thousand intermingling factors. Besides the two essential items, the 
intelligence he has inherited, the age he has reached, a host of subsidiary 
conditions inevitably affects his score. Zeal, industry, good will, emotional 
stability, scholastic information, the accident of class, the circumstance of 
sex — each and all of these irrelevant influences, in one case propitious, in 
another prejudicial, improve or impair the final result. To glance at the 
composition of the scale is to foresee its facile impressionability. Girls will 
figure well in the verbal tests. Errand boys and paper-boys will answer 
smartly in the money tests. The sullen child will at first refuse to reply 
altogether. The excitable child, through haste or confusion, wiU blunder 
into every trap. The truant and the invalid, having missed many lessons, 
will fail where print is to be read or pen is to be used. The busy little house- 
wife from an illiterate home, who there carries out the most intricate duties, 
will yet be unable to put those duties into words. The solitary child of a 
cultured family — profiting, perhaps, rather by daily intercourse with 
educated adults than by special inborn gifts — will respond with an informa- 
tion and a phraseology beyond anything he would spontaneously invent or 
acquire. Bias in such directions the very shape of the tests imparts. The 
examiner, therefore, who notes in the child but the one quality he means to 
measure, and ignores the many accidents which embarrass its manifestation, 
will expose his measurement to the jeopardy of gross distortion. He is like 
a chemist who weighs salts in a bottle without heeding the weight of the 
bottle itself. 

Of these numerous intervening agencies the most potent is, without 
doubt, educational opportunity. Many of the tests — some of. them with- 
drawn by Binet in his final revision — are sheer tests of school attainments. 
Reading, writing, dictation are learnt in English lessons ; counting, and 
addition and subtraction of money, in arithmetic lessons ; drawing from 
copy and drawing from memory, in drawing lessons ; the date is put at the 
head of every written exercise on every day of the term, and with equal 
regularity is never heard and never recollected on any day of the vacation. 
Estimated by the Binet-Simon scale, therefore, a child's apparent intelli- 
gence must depend in no small measure upon his class in school. 

The converse is, or should be, no less true. A child's school class must 
depend upon his apparent intelligence. In theory, at any rate, he is classified 
at entrance, and promoted year by year, in accordance with what he has 
learnt already and with what he seems likely to learn in future. In practice, 
we should consequently anticipate that ability and attainment would closely 
correspond. In what way is this correspondence to be verified ? 

The Influence of Intelligence upon Educational Attainments. 

There are here two cognate problems of no slight significance. How 
far is educational attainment determined by intelligence, measured as above ? 
How far is intelligence, measured as above, determined by educational 
attainment ? 

To the teacher the former question brings a practical appeal. How far 
will the finished excellence of the final product of his labours wait and depend 
upon an original excellence in the raw stuff upon which he has worked ? 



176 

How fully are his failures already predestined by the native refractoriness 
inherent in that material ? Does the child who starts his educational career 
endowed with large congenital abilities rise always to the top of the class 
at the top of the school ; or does genius pass often undetected ? Are the 
children who, year after year, get left behind near the bottom of the lowest 
classes doomed there irreprievably by their natural ineptitude ; or can a 
foundation of a solid stupidity yet be overlaid with a veneer of imparted 
knowledge, and tinctured and varnished with a colourable coat of super- 
added skill ? 

To these queries our data may yield tentative replies. Four schools in 
my survey were examined, not only for intelligence by the Binet-Simon 
scale, but also for educational attainments by means of scholastic tests. 
The scholastic examination embraced tests of reading, writing, dictation, 
arithmetic (mechanical processes and applied problems), and composition. 1 
Manual tests were also attempted ; but with results too precarious to include. 
The children ranged in age from seven to fourteen, and amounted in number 
to 689 — rather less than one hundred to each age-group. For both intelli- 
gence and attainments the marks of each candidate were first converted 
into terms of mental or educational years ; and then, divided by the chrono- 
logical age of each, were thus reduced to mental or educational ratios. The 
final measurements are distributed as shown in the table annexed (Table 
XIX.). 

Between educational ratio and mental ratio the correlation is -738, a 
magnitude by no means imposing. 2 The frequency-table itself, however, 
merits nearer inspection. Several inferences emerge. First, the children who 
are most retarded mentally, appear still more retarded educationally. As technic- 
ally backward we may regard all those who are retarded by more than 
15 per cent, of their age ; and, therefore, possess a mental ratio of less than 
85 per cent. In this sense the backward comprise 59 out of the whole 
number. Their average mental ratio is 79-6 ; their average educational 
ratio only 78-9. The difference is a somewhat subtle one ; but when we 
recall that the general range of deviation is, for educational attainments, 
much narrower than for intelligence, the small decline assumes a large 
significance. A study of the first four columns one by one shows that in 
each the commonest event is for a child to be lowered to an educational 
ratio 5 per cent, beneath his mental ratio. Feeble ability, then, entails 
acquirements feebler still. 

With those who, in intelligence, fall but slightly below the average, 
attaining ratios between 85 and 100, this tendency appears reversed. There 
is discernible an effort, and an effort by no means sterile., to coax and coach 
these milder dullards to a grade more closely fitted to their actual age. In this 
group alone acquired attainment is greater than inborn ability. Their 
average mental ratio is 93-7, their average educational ratio 95-8. The 
mental legacy which they inherit is slender. Yet, so judiciously have their 
teachers invested and improved it, that the accumulated interest now 
exceeds the capital. 

Fifteen children, having less than nine-tenths of normal capacity, can 
yet maintain, at least in routine work, a normal position in a normal 
class at school. Seldom, however, can a child below average intelligence be 
raised much above the average educationally. On the other hand, a child 

(*) See Appendix I of Memorandum III, pp. 339 et sea. 

( 2 ) The probable error of this coefficient is +-011. The correlation ratios are, for educational ratio on 
mental ratio. -843, and for mental ratio on educational ratio -775. The regression, particularly in the former 
case, thus deviates considerably from linearity. This, indeed, a cursory glance at the frequency-table is 
sufficient to reveal. 



177 



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178 

educationally below average may often display a ratio beyond average for 
intelligence. Only seventy- three with an educational ratio of 100 or more 
have a mental ratio below 100 ; only five with an educational ratio of 
100 or more have a mental ratio below 90 ; while as many as one hundred 
and three have a mental ratio above 100 and an educational ratio below. 

Passing, thus, in the third place, to those who are slightly above average, 
we find that the direction of the difference changes once more. For this 
group the average mental ratio is 106-9 ; the average educational ratio 
only 102-2 — hardly distinguishable from the general mean. These children, 
then, despite superior talent, are largely kept back scholastically , depressed to 
a stage which answers more closely to their actual years. Indeed, the whole 
table unmasks a strong disposition to level a child's school work up or down 
towards the common standard for his age. The number of children, whose 
educational ratio lies between 95 and 105, and is, therefore, equalised approxi- 
mately to the mean, becomes, when viewed from the standpoint of normal 
distribution, indisputably excessive. 

On turning, lastly, to the brightest of all — those whose mental ratio is 
over 115 — the same repression is perceptible. Their mental ratio is 123-1 ; 
their educational ratio 111-2. The abler children are thus deprived of more 
than half their advancement and over 10 per cent, of their mental age — a surrender 
tantamount, by the age of ten, to throwing to oblivion a whole year of their 
school life. Half a dozen in this group are prospective scholarship winners ; 
but the vast majority are children of good, sound, second-rate ability — such 
as merits instruction in a central school. Such potential candidates for 
central schools will evidently repay a keen attention at an early age ; and, 
thus watched and fostered, would, at the proper time, require selection by 
methods more carefully refined, and accommodation upon a scale more 
liberally enlarged. 

The most salient cases of disparity will reward an individual scrutiny. 
Out of the entire group ten receive an educational ratio 30 per cent, or 
more below their mental ratio. The reverse, it may be noted, never occurs. 
No child receives a mental ratio 30 per cent, below his educational ratio. 

Each of the ten by his history exemplifies some fallacy to which in 
their judgments either tests or teachers are exposed. The most notable is 
a boy aged lO^V a t the time he was tested. In intelligence, as judged by 
the Binet-Simon scale, he then appeared equal to a child of thirteen ; in 
educational attainments barely equal to a child of eight. Upon enquiry, it 
was learnt that, immediately after promotion to the senior department, he 
was forced by ill-health to be absent for the greater portion of two years. 
On his return he was placed in the same class as that which he was attending 
when he first quitted the schoolroom for the hospital. It was the class 
which a boy of seven or eight would naturally enter from the infants, approxi- 
mately equivalent to standard I. or II. He gave no trouble ; and attracted 
little notice. A few months later he was tested ; and proved to be, in a 
quiet way, brilliant in intelligence, though in school subjects unusually 
ignorant. In view of his exploits in the tests, he was thrust speedily for- 
ward ; and, when last seen, at the age of eleven and a half, was making 
excellent progress in standard V. Indeed, except for his backwardness in 
arithmetic — a subject where to cover the work of four standards within 
fourteen months would be an incredible feat — he was sufficiently equipped 
for the class above. 

A girl of 8 T % had a mental age of 12-5. She was then only in standard 
III.B. After the tests she was promoted with special rapidity. She has 
now, at the age of ten and a half, reached the top of standard VI. ; and is 
predicted by her teacher to be " a sure scholarship winner." 



179 

In the same class an older girl of 9 T °T7 had a mental age of 13-6. She 
has just failed to win a scholarship — her weak subject being the paper in 
arithmetic. Reporting on the girl, the headmistress states : " Norah F. 
proved the brightest of all our candidates this year ; but was beaten by 
Eva H., who was certainly not so sharp." Eva H., in the Binet tests, fell a 
year behind her unsuccessful schoolfellow. But then, while Norah was 
marking time in standard III.B., Eva had already been moved to 
standard IV. A. 

One other girl, despite a high mental ratio, was lodged in a class only 
level with her age. She belongs to a species, familiar since antiquity : homo 
vagus et inconstans. By her teacher she is aptly described in a single word — 
" unreliable." At times, roused by some rare emergency, stimulated perhaps 
by some fresh personality, she may respond with a flash of unexpected 
sprightliness. On other days her mind lies bewildered and inert. " But she 
does well," adds the teacher significantly, " in psychological tests and parlour 
games." Here evidently is an instance where the error rests rather with 
the Binet estimate than with the indications of the scholastic test. 

There are in the table two interesting cases where the mental ratio is 
120 and the educational ratio only 90. Both are emotional, inattentive 
children, each in a different way. The girl is excitable ; the boy reserved. 
The girl seeks notice, and obtains an undue share ; the boy dislikes attention, 
and too easily evades it. The girl is glib and plausible — indeed, her conver- 
sational gifts have earned for her in the Binet-Simon tests an estimate her 
general powers would hardly warrant ; the boy is taciturn, and before he 
will do justice to his latent capabilities must be tactfully drawn on and 
drawn out. Of the former the teacher says : " She answers up well enough, 
but is disappointing. She has no power of concentration ; and, without 
being lazy, she does not work." Manifestly she belongs to that perplexing 
type which elsewhere 1 I have tried to portray in detail — the unstable child. 
The boy illustrates emotional instability in an opposite form. He 
is of the repressed or sensitive variety rather than of the excitable or un- 
repressed. He is described by his teacher as " slow and sleepy." It would 
be perhaps truer to call him " slow and sure." When his attention wanders, 
he is not asleep ; he is dreaming, giving full flight to a somewhat precocious 
imagination. In arithmetic he is very poor. He reads voraciously ; and 
spells execrably. But his compositions sparkle, even where they do not 
shine. There is many a quiet child with a touch of this whimsical tempera- 
ment. Shy, timid, uncommunicative, yet on acquaintance most engaging, 
they can be brought to show their finer qualities only through patient sym- 
pathy and personal interest. In a large class they usually remain incompris — 
a little mysterious, and very much misconstrued. Just because they are 
pensive and visionary within, they seem outwardly aloof and unobservant. 
Soaring in fantasy, they see no facts. They are like those celestial beings 
whom the Scriptures represent as veiling their eyes with their wings. 

Out of all the children in the table the cleverest is a boy aged (at the 
time of the examination) 8 T 2 2-, with a mental age of 12-6. His mental ratio 
was, therefore, 154 — one of "the highest I have encountered in elementary 
schools. He was then in standard IV. In tested ability he was even with 
the children in standard VI. Yet, in a department organised in the usual 
way, to promote so young a child to so high a class would seem hardly politic. 
Cases of this order raise a practical issue. May it not in the long run prove 
remunerative in the fullest sense to institute for supernormal children special 
classes analogous and complementary to those established in many schools with 
much success for the backward and subnormal ? 

(') Child Study, Vol. X., No. 3, October, 1917, "The Unstable Child." 



180 

Three cases remain. They are children lately transferred from the 
infants' department. In every instance, the teachers report that the children 
have been attending the senior department hardly long enough for any 
opinion on their proficiency to be formed, or for any promotion into a higher 
class to be justified. Such reports are suggestive. Perhaps one of the most 
profitable uses of an intelligence test, such as the Binet-Simon scale, might be 
found in examining children of youthful age and unknown ability who enter 
a new department from an infants', a junior mixed, or another senior 
school. 

These illustrations should not be misinterpreted. Not for an instant 
are these discrepancies adduced to asperse either the precision of the class 
teachers' judgment, or the efficiency of the head teachers' organisation. 
Indeed, where no method exists, quick, simple, and trustworthy, for assessing 
children's abilities, there it can be no disparagement to contend that 
children's abilities have not always been accurately gauged. And, when all 
is said, the cases of extreme maladjustment are exceptional. They number 
ten out of seven hundred. 

Yet they are exceptions in no wise limited to the few schools studied. 
To submit, indeed, each of the three thousand children tested by the Binet 
method to a further examination in school work would have consumed an 
impracticable deal of time and labour. Instead, some notion of the child's 
educational level could always be gleaned from the standard in which he 
was classified, or from the report delivered by his teacher. Such larger and 
looser comparisons confirmed the more intensive ; they showed that the 
incongruities disclosed in the smaller sample would recur, proportionately 
multiplied, in a more extended search. On the whole, however, the leading 
feature here too was correspondence : class at school and ability in tests, 
apart from some notable divergences, approximately conform. 

The Influence of Educational Attainment upon Tests of Intelligence. 

I turn now to enquire if the relation is reciprocal : whether the con- 
formity observed is due, not merely to the child's ability determining his 
school attainments, but also to his school attainments determining his display 
of ability. 

The problem is a problem in multiple correlation. Simple correlation 
between two variables — as between a test of intelligence and an independent 
estimate of intelligence — is a mode of statistical enquiry that is now familiar 
in educational science. But here we are unravelling a network of interlacing 
correlations, correlations with age and with class, as well as between tests 
and estimates. 

Things which are correlated with the same thing become correlated 
with one another ; and this second-hand assimilation obscures any original 
likeness or unlikeness. We must, therefore, subtract from the test measure- 
ments all influence of age and of pure intelligence, in order to discover 
whether there still remains any direct interaction between class-standing 
and test-results, over and above the derivative agreement which the common 
factors of intelligence and age induce. A pupil passes the tests with a mental 
age of six. In theory his performance should argue one or other, or both, 
of two things. He may be young ; he may be dull ; he may at once be 
dull and young. Take any one of these alternatives. In view of youth 
or dulness or of both alike he would, of course, be relegated to a low school 
class. Low class and low mental age would thus be found in unison. Is 
some plain assumption of this obvious sort sufficient to account for the whole 
of such correspondences ; or is there yet in fact a further influence, an added 



181 

interplay of factors which this simpler theory does not include ? Is the 
agreement between class and test due solely to the mediation of the two 
essential conditions — an age that is undoubtedly young and an intelligence 
that is genuinely weak — or does the child's position in school of itself recoil, 
reacting adversely upon the tests, limiting his performances, impoverishing 
his replies, and so produce a mental age artificially depressed, lower far than 
actual intelligence and actual years would of themselves entail ? 

To detect and disengage this further possibility we should first strip 
away the effects of age and intelligence, and then observe if, connecting 
mental measurements with class attainments, there still persists, unexplained 
and uninduced by these twin factors, a surplus core of correlation. 

The elimination of common factors such as these may be accomplished 
in theory by the method known to statisticians as " partial correlation," a 
method already employed in my earlier memorandum to analyse the relation 
of educational abilities among themselves. 1 Given the observed or " total " 
correlations between three or more variables paired in every possible way, 
we can, by means of a simple formula, deduct from any of the total co- 
efficients — for example, from the correlation between intelligence and class — 
the amount of correlation attributable to some tertiary factor influencing 
both in the same direction — for example, age. The residuary quantity is 
termed the " partial " coefficient. 

For every child in an entire school, comprising just over three hundred 
pupils aged between seven and fourteen, I have secured the following measure- 
ments : first, the child's age ; next, his school attainments, measured 
by an educational examination, the results being revised by the teachers ; 
thirdly, his intelligence measured by special tests of reasoning, 2 the results, 
again, being checked by the teachers ; and, lastly, his mental age, given 
directly by the present version of the Binet-Simon scale, unchecked and 
unrevised. 

The first column of figures in Table XX. shows the six correlations 
subsisting between these four measurements coupled with one another in 
every one of the six ways possible. 3 

From these six " total " coefficients, taken each in turn, I have first of 
all eliminated one or other of the four factors operative. From the gross 
figures I have, by discount, found the net. The resulting "partial" co- 
efficients are given by the second column of figures in the table. A com- 
parison of these values at once invites several inferences. The resemblance 
between the Binet-Simon results and the child's school standing seems due 
more to the common influence of age than to the common influence of 
intelligence. The resemblance between the Binet-Simon results and the 
child's intellectual maturity, estimated independently, seems due more to 
the common influence of school standing than to the common influence of 
age. The estimates for intellectual maturity owe their correlation with 
school standing — a correlation by no means high even at the outset — 
chiefly, but not entirely, to the common influence of age. When the influence 
of intelligence is excluded, there still remains a correspondence between age 
and position in school that is unexpectedly — indeed, I apprehend, un- 
warrantably — close : promotion goes suspiciously with seniority. The nega- 
tive correlation between school standing and intelligence, obtained when 
differences in Binet age are eliminated, may seem odd ; but even were it larger 

(') The Distribution and Relations of Educational Abilities, p. 53 et sea. 

( ! ) See Appendix IV., pp, 239-242. 

( 3 ) With a group of nearly 300 children, the probable error for correlations less than -12 ranges between 
+ -038 and + -039. A coefficient under '07, therefore, has little or no significance; one over '11 may be 
received as trustworthy. 



182 

than it is, it would not be at all inexplicable. 1 In a group homogeneous in 
regard to mental age, children who are older chronologically would, in a 
test measuring inborn intelligence rather than mere mental growth, appear 
duller ; yet, because they are older, the school system elevates them to a 
somewhat higher class. Hence the paradox of a group whose mental age is 
uniform : the higher the class, the duller the child. 



TABLE XX. 

Observed and Partial Correlations between Age, 
Attainments, and the Results of the Binet- 



Intelligence, School 
■Simon Tests. 



Factors 
Correlated. 


Observed 
Coefficients. 


Factor 
Eliminated. 


Paroial 

Coefficient 

(First 

Order). 


Factors 
Eliminated. 


Partial 

Coefficient 

(Second 

Order) . 


Tests and School 




Intelligence. 


•78 


Intelligence 




Work. 


•91 


Age. 


•68 


and Age. 


•61 


Tests and Intelli- 




School Work. 


•58 


School Work 




gence. 


•84 


Age. 


■65 


and Age. 


•56 


Tests and Age. 


•83 


School Work. 


•19 


School Work 








Intelligence. 


•62 


and Intelli- 
gence. 


•13 


School Work and 




Tests. 


-•06 


Tests and 




Intelligence. 


•75 


Age. 


•40 


Age. 


-•07 


School Work and 




Tests. 


•49 


Tests and 




Age. 


■87 


Intelligence. 


•73 


Intelligence. 


•49 


Intelligence and 




Tests. 


•01 


Tests and 




Age. 


•70 


School Work. 


•15 


School Work. 


•05 



Let us now examine the partial coefficients of the second order, 
coefficients, that is, obtained where two factors have been cancelled in 
succession (last column of Table XX). 

Intelligence, it may be remembered, was observed to correlate with the 
Binet tests by -84 and with school attainments by -75. Mediated solely by 
intelligence, therefore, a correlation between the Binet estimates and school 
attainments could be predicted amounting at least to -75 X -84, that is -63. 
The total correlation found, however, was as much as -91. The excess is 
due, in part at leest, to the second common factor of age. But, on 
eliminating also the effect of age, there is still left a substantial surplus. 
With both age and intelligence constant, the " partial " correlation between 
school attainments and Binet results remains at -61. Of all the partial co- 
efficients of the second order this is the largest. There can, therefore, be 
little doubt that with the Binet-Simon scale a child's mental age is a measure 
not only of the amount of intelligence with which he is congenitally endowed, 
not only of the plane of intelligence at which in the course of life and growth 
he has eventually arrived ; it is also an index, largely if not mainly, of the mass of 
scholastic information and skill which, in virtue of attendance more or less 
regular, by dint of instruction more or less effective, he has progressively 
accumulated in school. 

The correlation of -49 between age and educational attainment, left 
after the elimination of ability both tested and observed, confirms our 

V) The coefficient in question is barely twice its probable error. 



183 

previous suspicion of the undue influence of age upon school classification. 
The only other correlations surviving after the double elimination are those 
between the Binet tests, on the one hand, and intelligence and age respectively 
upon the other. 

From the three final correlations thus furnished by the tests, and from 
the relevant standard deviations, can be calculated the several so-called 
" regressions." The regressions will indicate the relative proportions in 
which the three factors — age, intelligence, and school attainments — together 
determine a child's achievements in the Binet-Simon tests. The complete 
equation is as follows : — 

B = -54 S + -33 I + -11 A, 

where B = mental age according to the Binet-Simon scale, 

S = school attainments expressed in terms of educational age, 
I == intellectual development also measured in terms of years, and 
A = the chronological age. 

Of the gross result, then, one-ninth is attributable to age, one-third to 
intellectual development, and over one-half to school attainment. School 
attainment is thus the preponderant contributor to the Binet-Simon tests. 
To school the weight assigned is nearly double that of intelligence alone, 
and distinctly more than that of intelligence and age combined. In 
determining the child's performance in the Binet-Simon scale, intelligence can 
bestow but little more than half the share of school, and age but one-third the share 
of intelligence. Isolated from scholastic progress and from intellectual 
development, age subscribes a positive but paltry portion. Its tribute is, 
presumably, that fund of worldly wisdom (or some fraction of that fund) 
which from his cradle onwards is amassed by every child, whether intelligent 
or unintelligent, whether an incorrigible truant or a daily attendant at 
school. But to achieve distinction, at all events, in a trial so academic as the 
Binet-Simon tests, experience must be heavily supplemented ; it must be 
reinforced either by the artificial aids supplied by a civilised society or by 
the natural stimulus of an unusual native wit. Imagine two children, aged 
seven and seventeen respectively, both possessing an intelligence equally 
normal, neither having passed a single hour in school. The younger, as a 
consideration of the several tests will show, might reach a mental age of six ; 
the older, despite ten years of seniority, barely that of nine. So barren is 
growth deprived of opportunity. 

The Influence of Ability in Specific Scholastic Subjects. 

Some data may be appended on the influence of the different topics of 
the curriculum, taken one by one. Between mental age and attainments 
in each of the subjects tested the total correlation observed is given by the 
first column of coefficients set out in the table subjoined (Table XXL). For 
this more specific problem the influence of school class becomes of smaller 
interest, and might even introduce irrelevant disturbances ; accordingly, the 
correlations have been calculated, not for the three hundred children as a 
single group, nor yet for the age-groups separately, but for the several 
classes ; the coefficients drawn from the different classes have then been 
averaged. Since within each class differences in intelligence are by the very 
process of classification somewhat reduced, the correlations are slender. 
But homogeneity in a school class is far from perfect. Consequently, by the 
method of partial correlation such differences as there are either in age or 
in intelligence (estimated independently of the Binet-Simon tests) have been 
again eliminated. The partial coefficients are appended in the last column 
of the table. 



184 

On an average, the total correlations are higher for the literary subjects 
than for the mathematical ; and higher for the mathematical than for the 
manual. In manual subjects, however, estimates of attainment can rarely 
pretend to much fidelity. Indeed, for drawing and handwork the measure- 
ments secured with the present group are demonstrably unsound. In the 
literary subjects the size of the observed coefficients might seem on a cursory 
view to betoken for them an unusual diagnostic value. Composition, it may 
be thought, measures intelligence better than arithmetical problems ; reading 
and dictation better than arithmetical rules. It may be so. But the magni- 
tude of the partial coefficients dispels all support that such an hypothesis 
might hope for in the present data. For while the Binet-Simon measure- 
ments, when age and intelligence are discounted, show little correlation with 
arithmetic marks, they still exhibit a pronounced and persistent correlation 
with the three linguistic subjects. Hence, these latter subjects form no 
mere passive vehicles for the revelation of general intelligence. Linguistic 
ability and linguistic attainments exert upon the Binet-Simon tests a special 
and positive influence of their own. 

TABLE XXI. 

Observed and Partial Correlations between the Binet-Simon Tests 
and Attainments in the Several School Subjects. 





Observed 
Coefficients. 


Partial Coefficients 




(Age and Intelligence 
eliminated). 


Composition 


•63 


•32 


Reading 


•54 


•26 


Dictation 


•52 


•21 


Arithmetic (Problems) 


•55 


•07 


Arithmetic (Mechanical) 


•41 


•15 


Writing 


•21 


•01 


Drawing 


•15 


-•08 


Handwork 


•18 


-•06 



7. THE APPLICATION OF THE TESTS TO JUVENILE 
DELINQUENTS. 

The Distribution of General Intelligence and Educational Attainments among 

Juvenile Delinquents. 

Nowhere can the factors hitherto discussed be seen so vividly in operation 
as among researches on delinquency. The examiner's choice of a line of 
demarcation, the examinee's interest and attainment in school, and, perhaps 
still more, the attitude and temperament of both one or the other, change 
and modify, in a style most palpable to the critical reader, all estimates 
for the proportion of delinquents presumed to be defective. 

The most diverse figures, the most incredible conclusions, have been 
reached with the Binet-Simon scale. According to one investigator, 
" probably 80 per cent, of the children in the Juvenile Courts in Manhattan 
and Bronx are feebleminded." According to another, Dr. Goddard of 
Vineland, 66 per cent, of the cases in the Newark Detention Home, New 
Jersey, are " distinctly feebleminded." Other writers are more conservative. 
" The best estimate and the result of the most careful studies indicate that 



185 

somewhere in the neighbourhood of 50 per cent, of all criminals are feeble- 
minded." " Practically one-third of our delinquent children are feeble- 
minded." Dr. Goring concluded that, of the convicts in England and Wales, 
10 per cent, could be regarded as definitely defective — 0-5 per cent, of the 
non-criminal population being defective in an equal degree. Finally, an 
estimate alike the most recent and the most guarded, based on a study 
of boys in Minneapolis, declares that only 1-4 per cent, of the delinquents 
sink below the level of the bottom 0-5 per cent, of the ordinary population, 
and only 7-3 per cent, below the level of the bottom 1-5 per cent, of the 



TABLE XXII. — Juvenile Delinquents. 

Distribution of General Intelligence at Each Age. 



Chrono- 




Mental Age. 


Total 


' Age. 


5- 


6- 


7- 


8- 


9- 


10- 


11- 


12- 


13- 


14- 




6- . 

7- . 

8- . 

9- . 

10- . 

11- . 

12- . 

13- . 

14- . 

15- . 




1 

2 


1 
o 

— 


1 
1 
1 

1 


o 

2 
1 

1 
1 


1 
2 
2 

1 

2 
1 
1 


2 
3 
4 
5 
3 
1 


1 

2 
3 
3 
6 
4 


2 
4 
8 
9 


1 
4 
5 

8 


1 
3 


2 
3 
3 

4 
6 
8 
12 
19 
24 
26 


Total • • 


1 


3 4 


7 


10 


18 


19 


23 


18 


4 


107 



ordinary population. Here, therefore, are amazing discrepancies that call 
for re-examination. 

With tests both of general intelligence and of educational capacity I 
have, during the last six years, examined over a hundred juvenile delinquents 
in London. The group consists of representative samples inspected at the 
Council's industrial schools and places of detention, and miscellaneous cases 
submitted for psychological examination by teachers, magistrates, and 
secretaries of colonies for delinquent children. The misdemeanour in the 
majority of cases was petty theft ; but the catalogue of offences includes 
begging, wandering, truancy, assault, sexual offences, damage to property, 
and being beyond parental control. 

The distribution of the children according to mental age is entered in 
Table XXII. , and according to educational attainments in Table XXIII. 

The average chronological age of the entire group was 13-2 ; the average 
mental age, 11-3 ; the average scholastic age, 9-5 — equivalent to standard III. 
Thus, on an average the delinquents are retarded by nearly two years in general 
intelligence, and by yet a further two years — four years in all — in educational 
attainments. 

The measurements for each individual delinquent have also been ex- 
pressed as multiples of the standard deviation of the corresponding normal 
age-group. The frequencies obtained at each age can thus be legitimately 
added ; and the totals for general intelligence and educational attainments 
legitimately compared. For all ages the total frequencies are given in 
the upper rows of Table XXIV. In educational attainments, the back- 



186 



TABLE XXIII. — Juvenile Delinquents. 

Distribution of Educational Attainments at Each Age. 



Chrono- 
logical 
Age. 








Scholastic Age 


. 








Total 


5— 


6- 


7 — 


8- 


9- 


10- 


11- 12- 


13- 


14- 




6- . 

7- . 

8- . 

9- . 

10- . 

11- . 

12- . 
13- 
14- 
15- . 




1 


1 
3 
1 
2 

1 


1 
1 
1 

2 
1 
1 

1 


1 
1 
3 
4 

2 
2 
4 
3 


1 
2 
3 

5 

7 
8 


1 
1 
3 
6 
9 
11 


2 
3 
3 
2 


7 

i 


1 




2 

3 

3 

4 

6 

8 

12 

19 

24 

26 


Total . . 


1 


8 


8 


20 26 


31 


10 2 


1 

i 


107 



wardness of the delinquent appears, at first sight, not only to be out of all 
proportion to his backwardness in intelligence, but also, when compared 
with that observed among the general school population, to be so inordinate 
as almost to pass belief. The more violent extremes, however, occur among 
children who are over fourteen. Of these, the majority have not advanced 
beyond the low level reached on leaving school ; indeed, many have begun 
to recede. In general intelligence, too, the tests for these older children are 
not beyond cavil. Hence, in both cases the comparison will prove more 
valid, if limited to children of school age alone. The percentages of children 
who, at these years, exhibit the various degrees of backwardness or advance- 
ment are appended in the lower lines of the same table ; and are plotted 
diagrammatically in Figure 25. 

In general intelligence, among the delinquents of school age, 7 per cent, 
only are on or below the verge of mental deficiency ; one-fifth are definitely 
retarded ; nearly one-half fall slightly below the general average ; one- 



TABLE XXIV- — Juvenile Delinquents. 

Distribution of General Intelligence and Educational Attainments 
Irrespective of Age. 

(The unit is the standard deviation of the normal age -group, equivalent in 
general intelligence to 1 year at 8 — , and in educational attainments to 1 year at 
10 — . Zero marks the average at each age.) 





Deviation. 




-5 


-4 


-3 


_2 


-1 


o i+i 


S.D. 


Ages 6— to 15 — 
General Intelligence 
Educational Attainments 

Ages 6— to 13 — 
General Intelligence 
Educational Attainments 


2-8 


21-5 

8-8 


6-5 
38-3 

7-0 
29-3 


30-8 
23-4 

211 

36-8 


44-9 
11-2 

42-1 
211 


15-9 

2-8 

26-3 
5-3 


1-9 
3-5 


per cent, 
per cent. 

per cent, 
per cent. 



187 



Figure 25. 



DISTRIBUTION OF JUVENILE DELINQUENTS ACCORDING TO GENERAL 
INTELLIGENCE AND EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENTS. 

(Children aged 6- to 13-.) 



30 



10 




GENERAL 
INTELLIGENCE. 



30 
20 [ 
10 




EDUCATIONAL 
ATTAINMENTS 



-3 -2 -1 O +1 S.D 
DEVIATION FROM AVERAGE. 



188 

quarter are approximately equal to the general average ; and 2 per cent, 
rise slightly above. With delinquency supernormal intelligence is not 
incompatible ; but any well-marked degree of it is among delinquents 
evidently rare. In educational attainments none are sensibly above 
the average, and only 5 per cent, approximately equal to it ; one-fifth are 
slightly below ; and three-quarters are backward by over 1-5 S.D. — a large 
portion of these falling below the educational borderline of the mentally 
defective, though not themselves to be considered mentally defective from 
the aspect of general intelligence. Elsewhere I have advocated that a re- 
tardation of —1-5 to — 3-0 S.D. (equivalent to one and a half to three years 
at the age of ten) should be regarded as indicative of " scholastic backward- 
ness " in a technical sense — such backwardness requiring accommodation 
in special classes rather than in special (M.D.) schools. The majority of 
juvenile delinquents thus appear to be technically " backward," but not technically 
"defective." l As I have already urged, the association of juvenile delinquency 
with educational backwardness provides in itself a strong motive towards 
making special provision for the backward child during his school career. 

The Correlation of Delinquency with Deficiency and Backwardness. 

The relations of moral delinquency, on the one side, to mental deficiency 
and educational backwardness, on the other, can be most concisely compared 
by the statistical device of " association coefficients." A coefficient of 
association is a fraction, varying from zero to plus or minus unity, designed 
to measure the degree of correlation between attributes which are not them- 
selves quantitatively graded. Delinquency and, for administrative purposes, 
even mental deficiency and educational backwardness, are such attributes. 
A child either is or is not delinquent ; he either does or does not require 
transference to a special school or special class. For deficiency both in general 
intelligence and in educational attainments let us take one and the same line 
of demarcation, namely, a ratio of 70 per cent, of age. Among the non- 
delinquent population this ratio would cut off about 1 -5 per cent, as mentally 
defective and 2-0 per cent, as educationally defective. Apply this criterion 
to the entire delinquent group. Only 5*6 per cent, have a mental ratio less 
than 70 ; and presumably, therefore, are defective in general intelligence. 
But an educational ratio less than 70 is to be found among 42-1 per cent. — a 
proportion nearly eight times as large as the first. From such percentages 
a coefficient of association can be calculated by the aid of a simple formula. 2 
Between juvenile delinquency and mental deficiency the association proves 
to be only -33 ; between juvenile delinquency and educational deficiency it 
mounts to *71. If we considered only the delinquents of school age, and 
employed for educational backwardness the technical borderline of 85 per 
cent., the difference would be still further enhanced. The former coefficient 
would sink to -31 ; and the latter rise to -74. 

The educational backwardness of the moral reprobate may be referred 
to much the same causes as those which promote educational backwardness 
in the child who is morally normal. Irregular attendance, physical defects 
both general and specific, general and specific weakness in mental capacities, 
irregularity of growth and development, abnormality in emotional tendencies 
and in qualities of character as a whole — the list of factors is almost identical ; 
but their relative incidence is differently loaded. With the backward offender 

l 1 ) Throughout this section, to avoid circumlocution. I have treated the phrase "mental deficiency." in 
accordance^ with the usage of most -writers on this problem, as covering deficiency of intelligence alone. 
Properly speaking, temperamental instability, as I have argued in another place, should also, even where 
intelligence is unimpaired, be included under mental deficiency. 

( 2 ) See Appendix II., p. 217. 



189 

instability of temperament plays a dominant role. The fickleness of his 
interests, the flimsiness of his efforts, the flightiness of his attention, conspire 
to stultify all intellectual progress. He displays little interest in the lessons 
of the classroom, little attachment to the person of the teacher or the name 
of his school ; and what resolution, industry, and conscientiousness he can 
muster is insufficient to overcome either his natural indifference or his 
acquired aversion. The maladjustment between the concrete bent of the 
individual and the abstract tasks of the school, or between a low class in 
the school organisation and a natural ability which is, in comparison, high, 
must undoubtedly react upon character. It fosters a sense of injustice ; and 
aggravates any instincts, nomadic, predatory, or rebellious, that may already 
have been inherited with an intensity too strong for control. By providing 
occupations and duties, in nature more congenial and in difficulty more 
advanced, by granting freer outlets for emotional tendencies, and a fuller 
play to the spirit of activity, many instinctive propensities, that would 
otherwise be driven to mutiny and provide motives for crime, may, when 
emancipated from repression and adroitly re-directed, yield energy for 
legitimate purposes and enthusiasm for nobler ideals and strenuous work. 

The low estimate for general ability among convicts and criminals, 
obtained so repeatedly with the Binet-Simon scale, is largely accounted for 
by their ediTcational backwardness. Upon scholastic attainments, and still 
more upon scholastic interests, success in the ordeal very intimately hangs. 
Almost equally decisive may be the conditions under which the test is applied, 
and the manner in which its performance is approached. For what to them 
must seem nothing but a resuscitated school examination, delinquents, 
as a rule, feel little inclination and much distaste. From the outset they 
assume they are more likely to fail than succeed, more likely to be reproached 
than commended. Examined in a remand home or in a prison, they are 
often labouring under an emotional strain — anxious, angry, uncomfortable, 
or depressed. Unless, indeed, to circumvent their suspicion and secure their 
goodwill special manoeuvres be tactfully tried, their apparent prowess with 
all such tests will fall much below their veritable powers. 

Children sequestered in an institution from an early age suffer from a 
further handicap. Brought up within the walls, perhaps, of an industrial 
school, governed from day to day and hour to hour by the rules of a super- 
imposed routine, they preserve a curious ignorance of simple practical 
affairs — the values of the commoner coins, for example ; they develop a 
sorry want of initiative, of forethought, and of self-reliance. Such a life 
of regulated dependence lowers their performance in the tests. Towards 
adolescence they may be liberated — thrown back, it may be, into a lax home 
and loose environment. They drift. And the constant change of employ- 
ment and situation, the ingrained lack of self-direction and self-discipline, 
will seem to confirm the illusory diagnosis of deficiency, which their back- 
wardness in mental tests and in school knowledge had already suggested. 
To argue, as I have argued, however, that they are not, except in rare in- 
stances, genuinely defective, is not to declare that they require no super- 
vision and need no guidance. Rather it prompts the question whether a 
reform in the discipline of such institutions, following perhaps along the 
lines of the well-known experiments in self-government already made in 
several delinquent colonies, might not obviate the necessity for social control 
by training the child to control himself. 

The misleading implications of quasi-scholastic tests have been exposed 
most transparently where I have followed up delinquents, juvenile and adult, 
after their emergence from the prison or remand home and on their 
resumption of ordinary life. In anything reminiscent of a lesson they 



190 

participate reluctantly, and fail outright. But challenge them with a problem 
that appeals to their interest — some logical puzzle, disguised, it may be, as a 
brief detective story about an unsolved crime — then they will accomplish 
intellectual feats two or three years above the standard they exhibit in tests 
more academic. Dexterity, not only in carrying out their crimes, but also 
in managing their everyday affairs, acquits the majority of them of any 
suspicion of mental deficiency in the narrower sense. They may be scholastic- 
ally backward ; they may be emotionally unstable ; they may be morally 
unsound : in general intelligence they are not defective. 1 

I would not, however, deny that, unrecognised and unprovided for, 
mental deficiency is a grave and genuine source of crime. For example, 
among repeated offenders, and particularly among female offenders, 2 intelli- 
gence is, as a rule, of a decidedly low grade, and, on occasion, without a 
doubt deficient. But in the causation of juvenile delinquency — so often 
itself a transitory and even natural phenomenon— the share contributed by 
mental defect has unquestionably been magnified by those who, trusting 
so exclusively to the Binet-Simon scale, have ignored the factors which 
depreciate its results, and have adopted without criticism or misgiving the 
line of demarcation as currently proposed. 3 



8. THE INFLUENCE OF SEX AND SOCIAL STATUS. 

Differences in General Ability due to Social Status. 

Among the ordinary schools tested in my general investigation stand 
two that were selected as representing opposite extremes of the social scale. 4 
Both belong to the borough chosen for my previous survey of educational 
abilities. One is attended by pupils drawn from families that in social status 
rank among the best of those sending children to elementary schools. The 
other is situated in one of the meanest of the overcrowded slums that cluster 
about the great railway termini. In Charles Booth's map of London poverty 
the streets from which the latter is recruited are marked as of the lowest 
types — " very poor " and " criminal." Those characteristics they still pre- 

( 1 ) To this an unintentional parallel may be found in the statements of different Americans working in 
the same institution. At the New York State Beformatory for Women, Bedford Hills, several studies have 
been made by various investigators using various methods. One examiner, using the Binet scale, reports 
that practically all the inmates were feebleminded ; others, using only case-histories and records obtained 
from teachers and attendants, report that but 15 to 20 per cent, appear mentally deficient. 

( 2 ) The group described contained delinquents of both sexes. The average mental ratio of the boys was 
83-3, of the girls 82-9. But the material is too scanty for the difference to be, as it stands, of much signifi- 
cance. It is, indeed, among somewhat older criminals — in the hardened man with three or more convictions, 
in the woman with no other trade but prostitution — that mental deficiency, still of a high and even question- 
able grade, is more frequently encountered. 

( 3 ) In the causation of juvenile delinquency (as I endeavour to show in a series of articles in the J. Exp, 
Pedagogy, VI. , i, pp. 1 et seq. ) the preponderant psychological factors are, as a rule, not intellectual but emotional, 
not mental deficiency as revealed by tests, but repressed complexes (on a basis of temperamental instability) 
revealed by psycho-analysis. 

( 4 ) In the hope of defining more precisely the economic conditions of the poorest, the median, and the 
best school, a careful social investigation was made of the home conditions of all the children aged 10- attending 
these several schools. For information on many of these points I am especially indebted to Miss Backstraw, 
District Organiser of Children's Care Work for the area in question, to visitors and secretaries of the local care 
committees, and to the attendance-officers for the district. Unfortunately, owing to the fluctuations of war- 
conditions, more recent figures for wages, income, rent, or rate of living would be misleading rather than 
suggestive. In Table XXVI., therefore, I give the pre-war income and rent (so far as I have been able to 
obtain them) and figures showing the present size of the family and of the home. It may be noted that the 
commoner occupations were as follows : in the poorest school, for the fathers, carman, coalman, railway 
porter, road-sweeper, bricklayer's labourer, hawker, and various forms of casual labour ; for the mothers, 
charing, button-making, bottle-washing, laundry-work, and, during the war, work in munition factories ; in 
the median school, for the fathers, motor-driver, hotel porter, postman, policeman, carpenter, engine-driver 
and lower grades on the railway, and small shopkeeping in side-streets ; for mothers (seldom working) waitress, 
cook, embroiderer ; in the best school, clerk, sorter at post-office, police-sergeant, railway inspector, timber 
merchant, skilled trade, shopkeeping in a main suburban street. 



Figure 26. 

AVERAGE NUMBER OF TESTS PASSED AT EACH AGE 
BY CHILDREN OF ORDINARY ELEMENTARY AND 
SPECIAL (M.D.) SCHOOLS, AND OF SUPERIOR AND 
POORER SOCIAL STATUS. 



65 

60 

50 
40 
30 
20 
10 




_X SUPERIOR 
AVERAGE 



* POOR 



MENTALLY 
DEFECTIVE 



J I I L 



3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 YEARS 

CHRONOLOGICAL AGE 



To face page 191.1 



191 

serve. In social status, therefore, the two schools may be received as 
typifying the best and the worst from a representative borough. 

The results secured at either school are shown in Figure 26 and Table 
XXV. Figure 26 shows the average number of tests passed at each age in 
the " superior " and in the "poor" school respectively, and, for comparison, 
the averages obtained from the whole population. Table XXV. presents 
the difference between the general average and the averages at the two 
schools, first in terms of tests (columns 2 and 3), and secondly in terms of 
mental years (columns 4 and 5). 

TABLE XXV. 

Differences due to Social Status. 



Chronological 




Average Number of 
Tests passed. 


Average Mental 
Age. 


Age. 


Superior 
School. 


Poor 
School. 


Superior 
School. 


Poor 
School. 


7 — 

8 - . 

9 - . 
10- . 

11 - . 

12 - . 

13 - . 

14 - . 








44-4 
48-5 
510 
54-3 
56-2 
57-5 
59-3 
60-5 


31-2 
36-3 
42-6 
46-8 
50-4 
52-9 
55-2 
54-8 


8-9 
10-1 
10-6 
11-5 
12 1 
12-8 
13-7 
14-2 


6-1 

7-2 

8-4 

9-6 

10-3 

110 

11-7 

11-6 



The " superior *' school is nearly a year ahead of the general average ; 
the "poor" school more than a year behind. The pre-eminence of the 
" superior " school is most marked during the earlier years ; but after the 
age of ten it sinks to about half the magnitude sustained through the pre- 
ceding period : the drop is to be connected principally with the large number 
of scholars removed about the age of eleven to secondary and central schools. 

TABLE XXVI. 

Home Conditions of Children attending Schools of Median, 
Poorest, and Best Social Status. 





Poorest 
School. 


Median 
School. 


Best 
School 


Average weekly pre-war income 
Average number of children 

living at home 
Average number of rooms in 


26-4 s. 

5-2 

2-3 
5-8 s. 


37-3 s. 

41 

3-4 
10-1 s. 


49 • 6 s. 
2-9 

4-7 


Average weekly rent 


12 -8 s. 



The backwardness of the " poor " school is likewise most obvious when the 
children emerge from the infants' department. It is, apparently, in early 
childhood that their minds wear most visibly the sharp impress of their 
parents' poverty. Even by the age of six or seven the difference has doubt- 
less already decreased. 1 It continues to dwindle, as the table shows, until 
the age of twelve. But during the last two or three years it once more 
becomes peculiarly large. This final decadence may be referred to several 

I 1 ) This is confirmed by other experiments. It was not possible to make comparable investigations in 
the infants' department of the schools referred to in Table XXV. 



192 

factors. Among the ill-to-do some reach early their limit of growth ; others 
mature late. Many of the brightest, too, leave for work at an age unduly 
young. But, above all things, for children from the lower social strata the 
harder literary tests must lie for ever beyond their cultural horizon. 

Averages, particularly those like the above derived from different 
individuals for different ages, obscure one important fact, which reveals 
itself not infrequently among the poorer children, when year after year 
the same individuals are traced and retested. This is the phenomenon 
of deferred development. It is a feature akin to that of " latent normality," 
which, as we have seen, is from time to time observable in higher grade 
defectives. Among the children of the slums, while most reach early what 
might be called their point of educational saturation, and perhaps touch 
their utmost limit of mental growth before their physical growth is half- 
completed, a few, on the other hand, commence again to develop with an 
exceptional speed at an age unusually delayed. They enjoy, as it were, a 
St. Martin's summer ; and expand even more rapidly than in their natural 
spring. Towards the end of their school career many seem in a fair way 
to retrieve their previous retardation. 

Emily G., for example, who lives with seven other persons in a couple of 
rooms in one of the meanest streets of a poverty-stricken area, was promoted 
to the senior school at the age of 7-^, as a small and backward child with a 
mental age of only 6-3, a ratio, therefore, of only 82 per cent. During the 
next two years she made rapid progress ; and at the age of 9 T 6 ^ had a ratio 
of 96 per cent. She then entered her chrysalis. By the age of llx% she had 
made barely half a year's progress. Her mental ratio was now only 84 per 
cent. Soon after this date she seemed suddenly to emerge ; at 13y% she had 
a mental ratio of over 100 per cent., and was among the brightest in her year. 

A second girl in another school from an even poorer home, whose mental 
ratio before the age of twelve had never touched 90 per cent, and had ap- 
peared during the preceding two years to be diminishing, showed unex- 
pectedly, when re-examined at the age of fourteen, an ability in various 
tests of intelligence approximating to that of an average child in a central 
school, although, of course, in scholastic tests, particularly in her knowledge 
of the higher rules of arithmetic she was far below. 

These cases, though exceptional, are by no means rare. It is among 
girls of the humbler classes that this late acceleration most frequently 
affects my tests. With boys the slower onset of puberty, and the added 
stimulus of freedom, fresh work, and the earning of a wage, that comes 
upon them when they change from pupils into workmen, place the date of 
their final mental spurt just beyond the period of school life. 

That children of better social status succeed better with the Binet- 
Simon scale is not necessarily an objection to that scale ; nor is it neces- 
sarily a ground for constructing separate norms : for, by birth as well as by 
home training, children who are superior in social status may be equally 
superior in general ability. Conversely, if a child proves defective according 
to a scale that is otherwise authentic, the mere fact that his family is poor 
and his dwelling a hovel does not of itself condone his deficiency. His 
parents' home may be mean precisely because their hereditary intelligence 
is mean. Whether poverty and its accompaniments affect the child's per- 
formances in any direct fashion — whether, for example, in the Binet-Simon 
tests a child that inherits an abundance of natural ability may be handicapped 
through a lack of cultural opportunities — is a further and a separate issue. 
It is a recurrent problem which we cannot hope finally to solve until we 
have also analysed the differing effect of social status upon the individual 
tests, considered one by one. 



193 



Differences in General Ability due to Sex. 

The averages for the two sexes are shown in Table XXVII. , both in 
terms of tests (columns 2 and 3) and in terms of mental age (columns 4 and 5). 
At almost every age the girls outstrip the boys. Their superiority, however, 
is a modest one. On an average the girls appear advanced by about three- 
tenths of a year. The difference swells to a maximum about the age of six 
or seven ; at ten it is reversed in favour of the boys ; but their recovery is 
transient ; towards fourteen the superiority of the girls is again visibly 
mounting. Many have seen in such figures a sign that the feminine sex 
matures precociously. It would, however, be hard to disprove that the 
difference may be due solely to the general preponderance of literary and 
verbal exercises throughout the range of tests and to the heightened pre- 
ponderance of such exercises about the ages quoted : a linguistic bias would 
favour a linguistic sex. In tables got with other tests the differences from 
year to year of mental growth are less consistently maintained : the two 
sexes, indeed, seem during their intellectual progress to be playing a sort of 
statistical leap-frog, now one up, now the other, throughout their whole 
school course. Even here, rarely, if ever, do the differences of boys and girls 
reach the equivalent of half a year. Hence, to compile age-norms for the 
two sexes separately seems hardly needful. 

TABLE XXVII. 

Differences due to Sex. 



Chronological 
Age. 


Average Number of 
Tests Passed. 


Average Mental 
Age 


Boys. 


Girls. 


Boys. 


Girls. 


3- 






6-6 


9-6 


3-2 


3-8 


4 — 






14-8 


16-9 


4-5 


4-7 


5 — 






22-2 


26-5 


5-3 


5-7 


6 - 






31-5 


33-9 


6-2 


6-8 


7 — 






36-8 


39-4 


7-3 


7-8 


8 — 






42-5 


43-8 


8-4 


8-7 


9 - 






45-8 


46-7 


9-2 


9-6 


lO- 






51-6 


49-3 


10-7 


10-4 


ll - 




.. ! 54-2 


54-7 


11-4 


11-5 


12 - 




55-8 


56-7 


12-0 


12-4 


13- 




..1 57-7 


58-3 


12-9 


13-3 


14- 




58-8 


60-5 


13-5 


14-2 



Influence of Social Status upon the Individual Tests. 

In the tests considered singly the varying effects of sex and social status 
provide problems far more curious and instructive than these gross differ- 
ences found in the general age-averages with the test-series as a whole. 

As before, social influences may be examined first. To elicit the varia- 
tions in their incidence, I have calculated separately the number of children 
passing each test at schools attended respectively by children in better 
social circumstances and by children less fortunately placed. For both 
extremes a pair of schools have been selected — the two best and the two 
worst in these particulars. With but a single representative of either type 
of school, the figures for the tests taken individually would be too much at 
the mercy of wild accidents of sampling. To eliminate the influence of the 
varying size of the age-groups, the totals are based, not on the absolute 
number, but on the percentage passing the tests at each age. From these 
o 



194 

totals an order has been derived to exhibit the relative difficulty of the tests 
in either type of school. The two orders differ widely both from the general 
order, based upon all the schools, and from each other. The differences 
between the rankings for " poor " and " superior " schools are given in the 
first column of figures in Table XXVIII. A plus sign prefixed to a number 
signifies that in the " superior " schools the test named ranked above the 
position assigned to it in the " poor " schools by the number of places 
specified : in other words, superiority in the test appears positively associated 
with superiority in social station ; the test is relatively easier for children 
in good circumstances. Conversely, a minus sign intimates that the test 
was relatively easier for children from the least prosperous homes. 



TABLE XXVIII. 

Differences in Order of Difficulty for Children differing in Social Status 

or in Sex. 

(The -f sign indicates that a test is relatively easier for children of superior 

social status and for girls : 
The — sign indicates that a test is relatively easier for children of inferior 

social status and for boys.) 





Differences 




Differences 




in 


rder. 




in Order. 


Test. 






Test. 








Social 




Social 






Status. 


Sex. 




Status. 


Sex. 


Picture (Interpretation) 


+ 6 


— 1 


Differences (King, 





- 1 


60 Words 


+ 5 


-5 


President) 






Reading (2 Facts) 


+ 5 


+ 5 


Months 





- 1 


Dictation 


+ 5 


+ 5 


Morning and Afternoon 





- 1 


16 Syllables .. 


+ 4 


+ 9 


13 Pennies 





— 2 


Reading (6 Facts) 


+ 4 


+ 6 


3 Numbers 


— 1 


+ 3 


Differences (Abstract) 


+ 4 


+ 2 


4 Numbers 


— 1 


+ 2 


Sentence Building (1) 


+ 4 


+ 2 


7 Numbers 


— 1 


+ 2 


Picture (Description) 


+ 4 


+ 1 


Sex 


— 1 


- H 


Transcription 


+ 3 


+ 4 


2 Numbers 


— 1 


2 


Age 


+ 3 


+ 1 


Differences (Concrete) 


— 1 


-2 


4 Colours 


+ 2 


+ 6 


Absurdities 


— 1 


-2 


26 Syllables 


+ 2 


+ 3 


Diamond 


— 1 


-3 


Definition (Class) 


+ 2 


+ 3 


Square 


— 1 


- 5 


Re -Statement 


+ 2 


+ 21 


5 Numbers 


_ 2 


+ 3 


3 Rhymes 


+ 2 


+ 2 


Reversed Triangle . . 


2 


+ 2 


Sentence Building (2) 


+ 2 


+ 2 


Naming 


2 


+ 1 


Mixed Sentences 


+ 2 


+ 2 


Easy Questions 


2 


- 1 


Definition (Use) 


+ 2 


+ 2 


Date 


_ 2 


— 1 


Definition (Abstract) 


+ 2 


+ 1 


Missing Features 


_ 2 


-14 


Days of Week 


+ 2 


+ 1 


Folded Paper 


2 


-31- 


Surname 


+ 2 





2 Weights 


_ 2 


- 4 


10 Syllables 


+ 1 


+ 3 


Difficult Questions . . 


- 3 


- 1 


4 Pennies 


+ 1 


+ 2* 


4 Coins 


- 3 


- 3 


Fingers 


+ 1 


+ 2 


Triple Order 


- H 


- 5 


6 Syllables 


+ 1 


+ 1 


Change 


— 4" 


-2 


Picture (Enumeration) 


+ 1 


- 1 


Divided Card 


- 4 


-4 


Count 20 to 1 . . 


+ 1 


- 3 


Memory Drawing 


-4 


-4 


Right and Left 


+ 1 


-41 


5 Weights 


- 4 


- 5 


Comparing Faces 


+ £ 


+ 2 


9 Coins 


- 5 


— 4 


6 Numbers 





+ 3 


Pence and Halfpence 


— 5 


- 5 


Pointing 





i 

— 2" 


Problems 


- 6 


- 3 


2 Lines 





1 


Suggestion 


- 10 


— 7 



195 

The differences are in some cases profound. Thus, " suggestion " ranked, 
on an average, fifty-first in the " poor " schools and sixty-first in the 
" superior " schools — a difference of ten places. A difference so large might 
easily cause the test to appear as an X.-year test (rather a hard one, no 
doubt) in the former school, and a XlV.-year (rather an easy one, no doubt) 
in the latter school. 1 

An analysis of the differences is not without significance for school 
administration. Ill-to-do and well-to-do alike possess their own limitations, 
and enjoy their own specialities. The scale of the tests, with its many-sided, 
variegated features, casts searching rays upon the mental heterogeneity 
with which, in training children from diverse homes, the teacher has to cope. 

The tests which prove relatively easier for children of " superior " social 
class fall principally into the following broad groups : (1) Tests requiring 
linguistic facility, particularly those that depend upon a wide vocabulary — 
e.g., giving sixty disconnected words in three minutes, building one (or two) 
sentences to contain three given words, finding rhymes, defining and differ- 
entiating between abstract terms, describing or interpreting pictures, defining 
concrete terms, and summarising a philosophical paragraph. (2) Scholastic 
tests, especially tests in literary subjects — e.g., the two reading tests, dicta- 
tion and transcription. (3) Memory tests requiring the repetition of sentences — 
e.g., six, ten, sixteen, and twenty-six syllables. (Memory tests requiring the 
repetition of meaningless numbers show small differences in favour, if at all, 
of the " poor " schools.) (4) Tests depending upon items of information 
imparted during early life in a cultured home- — e.g., surname, age, four 
colours, number of fingers, weekdays, right and left. In all tests of the fore- 
going types superiority may be much enhanced where the child is the only 
child or the youngest child of an educated family. 

For the poorer children tests in the following categories prove relatively 
easier : (1) Tests depending upon familiarity with money — e.g., naming the 
four commonest coins, and later naming the nine commonest, adding pennies 
and halfpennies, and giving change. (2) Tests perceptual rather than con- 
ceptual in character, especially where manual activity is also introduced : 
namely, the drawing tests — e.g., memory drawing, possibly drawing the square 
and diamond ; the weight tests ; reconstructing the divided card, and per- 
haps naming common objects, as a knife, key, and penny. (3) The 
more practical tests generally — e.g., performing a triple errand — together 
with those tests which depend upon practical everyday knowledge — e.g., the 
easy and difficult questions and the " problems." (4) Tests depending upon 
critical shrewdness— e.g., noting absurdities, resisting suggestion. 

This analysis, though suggestive in results, is but tentative in aim . 
Figures obtained from a few schools only must not be pressed. Moreover, 
if one item in the list ranks as relatively easier, this automatically involves 
an apparent increase in the relative difficulty presented by others. To seek 
a reason, therefore, for every test displaced would be hazardous and rash. 
The dominant conclusion that emerges from the differences observable is 
this : It is an absolute impossibility to find for the tests an order of difficulty, 
fixed and universal, which shall be the same for schools of every type and for 
children of every class. Confining his verification to a single school, an investi- 
gator might easily conjecture that the order here published is flagrantly in 
error, and readily convince himself that certain tests should be transplanted 
to other years. The surmise would be but partly true. Success and failure 
hinge upon a vast array of varying factors, a multiplicity from which sex and 

t 1 ) The shrewd slum child unblushingly recognises that the examiner is setting a trap for him. The 
child of nicer manners hardly entertains such a suspicion, and conscientiously searches for minute differences : 
often his mistakes have nothing to do with the idee fixe, which Binet expected to be the chief source of error. 



196 

social status are but a pair of instances ; so that every seriation of the tests 
is bound to be in some measure arbitrary. Its validity increases only with the 
number and the variety of the specific cases on which it rests. Every 
arrangement, therefore, must be relative ; none final. 

Influence of Sex upon the Individual Tests. 

For the two sexes the comparative difficulty of the several tests differs 
in a like fashion, but to a narrower extent. In the second column of figures 
shown in Table XXVII. the differences between the orders for boys and 
girls respectively are presented upon the same principles as before. A plus 
sign means that a test is relatively easier for the girls ; a minus sign, that it is 
easier, or at least relatively easier, for the boys. Only those schools have 
been included from which both departments were examined. Between tests 
which are easier for girls and those which are easier for children of a better 
social class there appears a singular parallel. One ground doubtless for the 
analogy is to be discovered in a similarity of external conditions, in the 
resemblance between the environment and life-history of girls as contrasted 
with boys, upon the one hand, and the environment and life-history of 
children from superior homes as contrasted with children less happily cir- 
cumstanced, upon the other hand. Sheltered, supervised, detained at home, 
girls, like children of the better classes, incline to sedentary lives and engage 
in literary pursuits ; and, like those children, they consequently excel in 
linguistic work and conversational activities. Boys, like children of both 
sexes in the slums, have more to do with practical, perceptual, out-of-door 
pursuits. They are sent to shops with money. They are allowed to play and 
wander in the streets. They are encouraged to handle tools — to construct 
toys for amusement and articles for use. No wonder that — like the poorer 
child, whose lot in life for the present restricts him, and for the future destines 
him, to menial tasks and manual labour — boys grow more ready with hand 
and eye than with tongue or pen. 

For the weight test and for the easier drawing tests (where the boys are 
superior), for the tests of reading, colours, memory for syllables (where the 
girls are superior), the divergences between the figures from opposite sexes 
are even more pronounced than the divergences between the figures from 
opposite social classes. Here the parallelism is most apparent. Yet there 
are exceptions. In memory for numbers — a type of test in which children 
from the more comfortable social classes are not conspicuously successful — 
the girls excel. In the picture tests, on the other hand, they exhibit a pre- 
eminence neither so marked nor so consistent as that displayed by the 
children of better social status. In similar fashion a few anomalies may be 
discovered among the performances of the boys. They do well, for example, 
not only in the money tests, where the poorer children likewise fare to 
advantage, but also in the tests of counting, where the poorer children 
figure ill. 

Except in the infants' schools, and in one "mixed " school for junior 
children, the boys and girls thus tested have been educated in separate 
departments. Many of the differences — especially where such scholastic pro- 
cesses as reading, spelling, drawing, and arithmetic are involved — are but 
reflections of corresponding differences in the curricula ; they are due, not to 
inherent nature, but to social environment. The partial parallelism between 
sex and social differences points also to a similar cause. It hints that in both 
cases the special characteristics are in a large measure acquired rather than in- 
born. In "mixed " schools, where the boys and girls have been educated side 
by side— amongst others, in the junior special (M.D.) schools themselves — such 






197 



differences are by no means easy to demonstrate, though even here a few 
deeper sex-peculiarities, as in memory and the recognition of colours and 
coins, seem not infrequently to recur. 

It is instructive to test the foregoing differences by the statistical method 
of association. 1 Table XXIX. shows the values of the " coefficient of 
colligation " for all those tests that yield a reliable figure — a figure, that is, 
whose magnitude is at least three times its probable error. Numerous other 
tests yield figures positive but smaller, which, judged by their relation to 
the probable error, are presumably significant, though not implicitly to be 
trusted. 

A plus sign indicates a positive association between tested ability upon 
the one hand, and either superior status or feminine sex — which, if any, is 
the superior sex in the Binet tests — upon the other. A minus sign indicates 
a negative association, that is to say, a superiority in the tests on the side 
of the boys, or of the poorer schools. For the sex-differences the probable 
errors range for the most part between ±-02 and ±-04, according to the size 
of the coefficient ; for the social differences they are, with coefficients of the 
same size, about twice as large. 

TABLE XXIX. 

Association between Tests and Differences in Sex 
and Social Status. 





Coefficients of Colligation (w). 


Test. 










Intelligence and 


Intelligence 




Social Status. 


and Sex. 


Reading (2 Facts) 




+ 


28 


+ -18 


Dictation 




T 


28 


+ 


09 


60 Words in 3 Minutes . 




+ 


22 


+ 


13 


Reading (6 Facts) 




+ 


24 


+ 


11 


26 Syllables 




+ 


18 


+ 


15 


4 Colours 




+ 


18 


+ 


12 


Sentence Building (1) 




+ 


20 


+ 


08 


Picture (Interpretation) . 




+ 


23 


+ 


02 


Memory Drawing . . 




+ 


11 


— 


10 


Pennies and Halfpennies . 




+ 


10 


— 


13 


9 Coins 




+ 


05 


— 


11 


5 Weights 




+ 


03 


— 


12 


Suggestion 




— 


13 


- -21 



The table, where it quotes a test, confirms the differences already elicited 
by the method of rank comparison. Where it omits a test, it warns the 
reader that the conclusions which the differences in rank then prompted are 
not irrefragably proved. Sharpest and surest are the differences that arise 
between tests associated with the feminine sex positively and tests associated 
with it negatively. With superior status but one test is negatively associated, 
namely, suggestion. In suggestion, and in suggestion alone, the poorer 
children commit fewer errors, both relatively and absolutely, than the 
children in happier circumstances. With this one exception, throughout 
the series of tests, whether specified in the table or not, there is to be traced 
an association, unobscure and unequivocal, between social status and tested 
ability. This was inevitable. As we have seen, the poor children lag by 



(') For a brief explanation of this method and of the coefficient of colligation, see Appendix II., p. 21 ; 



198 

one or two years behind those of superior social status. Between social 
status and intelligence the average coefficient of association is, for the whole 
set of tests, + -15. Accordingly, in examining the varying incidence of 
social factors for the tests separately, the pertinent figure is not the absolute 
magnitude of the coefficient, but its divergence above or below this value 
of + -15. The positive coefficient of + -10, exhibited in the first column 
by "pennies and halfpennies," proves, it is true, that actually the better-class 
children succeed better at this test than the poorer ; but its smallness also 
implies — and this is its real bearing and significance — that relatively they 
do not succeed as well with it as they do with most of the other tests. With 
reading, and the seven tests that follow, they succeed disproportionately 
and doubly well. So used, the colligation coefficient flings into brighter 
relief the more prominent of the distinctions already foreshadowed by the 
method of rank-differences ; and guarantees their validity. 

Taking them all in all, however, we may, I think, with justice infer 
that the variations in the influence of sex and in that of social status are, 
when measured in this way, neither many in number nor profound in degree. 
Tests, indeed, like those cited in Table XXIX. exemplify the type of mental 
process that may well be abandoned in framing a scale intended to apply 
indifferently to both sexes and to all classes. 1 But they are exceptional. 
Sex differences and social differences exist, of course, within the mind as 
well as without it : in character, in interests, and in emotional disposition 
girls differ much from boys ; and in the absolute level of general intelligence, 
as a whole, children of better homes excel children from poorer. But, in 
the relative development of intellectual capacities, considered specifically 
one by one, girls and boys, children from better homes and children from 
poorer, diverge, the one group from the other group, in but a few stray in- 
stances and then to but a narrow or negligible extent. Such group-differences 
as can at these points be detected appear dwarfed and swamped by con- 
trast with the immensity of individual differences. That a scale of universal 
applicability, so far as sex and social status are concerned, is no impracticable 
chimera, seems evident. Even upon the Binet-Simon tests these two con- 
ditions exert nothing like the influence maintained by the factors studied 
previously — educational attainment, and general goodwill. 

Slight and slender as they are, however, the nature of the differences 
illuminates their origin. It confirms our previous suspicion. Facility in 
reading, counting, spelling, in the reckoning of money, in the use of words — 
these and the other special aptitudes enumerated are just such qualities as 
might be deduced from the peculiar environment and the peculiar traditions 
amid which the two sexes and the two social groups respectively live and move. 
If, then, the specific superiority is in either case not inherent but super- 
imposed, may not the general superiority shown by the better-class children 
be also acquired rather than hereditary ? Does it not emanate from en- 
vironmental advantages quite as much as from talent inborn ? 

In a valid measure of pure intelligence accidents of opportunity should 
have no weight. Hence, if these conjectures be well grounded, we should 
be forced to concede a large allowance to the poorer child before we permit 
ourselves to accept his weak performance as the sign and seal of mental 

(*) It may be noted that several of the tests enumerated in Table XXIX. follow closely one upon the 
other in the final order of difficulty already accepted (Table III.). Finding sixty words in three minutes and 
sentence building (one sentence) are both tests for age XI., and are both specially easy for girls and children 
of superior social status. Both are linguistic tests. The three tests that follow in age XII. have also the 
same linguistic character. Dictation and reading (two Facts), again, are similar and adjacent tests. Hence, 
at these two levels boys and poor children are alike somewhat unfavourably handicapped. Conversely, the 
fact that both the tests for age XIII. and two out of three of those for age X. are relatively easy for boys 
and for poor children, makes these levels relatively harder for girls and children of superior status to surmount. 



199 

defect. And although, with its strict justice tempered thus by merciful con- 
cessions, we may provisionally rely upon the Binet- Simon scale, we should 
yet spare no effort to construct a scheme that shall be immune to environ- 
mental agencies, and no longer prejudiced by the lack of a prosperous history 
or the want of a cultured home. 



9. THE DIAGNOSTIC VALUE OF THE TESTS. 

The Validity of the Scale as a Whole. 

The veracity of the scale for the diagnosis of intelligence forms a prob- 
lem that is fundamental. It is a problem upon which few direct observa- 
tions have as yet been published. How closely does the estimate of a child's 
intelligence, when measured by the scale as a whole, tally with what is 
known from prolonged and independent experience ? How effectively does 
each single test, by the successes or the failures it induces, discriminate 
between high and low degrees of intelligence ? Do the several tests differ 
widely from each other in such effectiveness ? If they do so differ, which 
tests are the most effective of all, and which, if any, are worthless ? These are 
vital issues, questions upon which, strangely enough, experimental evidence 
is still scarce and scanty. 

How far, in the first place, do the pronouncements of the scale in its 
entirety agree with the best judgments available from some independent 
source of admitted value ? 

There is no standard of comparison which can surpass or supersede the 
considered estimate of an observant teacher, working daily with the individual 
children over a period of several months or years. This is the criterion 
I have used. In certain schools the class-teachers were asked to rank the 
children known to them in an order of general intelligence, compiling separate 
lists for children in separate age-groups. General intelligence was denned 
as inborn all-round mental ability. In asking for estimates, emphasis was 
laid upon two facts : first, that practical out-of-school common sense should 
be weighed quite as attentively as scholastic ability ; and, secondly, that 
proper discount should be allowed for age. In grafting together the lists 
from different classes for children belonging to the same age-group some 
trouble was experienced. In theory it may be legitimate to assume that, 
at any rate among children born in the same year, every one in a higher 
standard is brighter than any one in a lower standard, no matter how low 
the former child may be placed within the high standard, no matter how 
high the latter child may be placed within the low. In practice the rule 
has many exceptions. There exists much overlapping, however unjustifiable, 
even with children of the same age-group. Nevertheless, in the schools 
examined, a class-teacher could usually be found who had at some time or 
another been acquainted with all the members to be compared from separate 
class-lists, and who could, as it were, dovetail their names into a continuous 
order of merit. With her aid a single composite series was drafted ; and 
the head-teacher was always good enough to check and rectify the final 
ranking. 

Correlations with Intelligence among Normals. 

With such an order, the order furnished by the Binet-Simon scale was 
correlated by the usual method of rank-differences. The average coefficients 
obtained from the different departments in the ordinary elementary schools 
are given in column 2 of Table XXX. For the senior children rankings 
were submitted from four departments. Each older age-group, therefore, 



200 

comprises about two hundred children. For groups of this number the 
probable error ranges from about ± -02 to ± -05. For children under six 
the age-groups comprise barely sixty cases each. The probable error here 
soars to the region of ± *10 to ± -14. Hence, below this age the coefficients 
afford but very rude approximations. 



TABLE XXX. 

Correlations between Tests and Teachers' Estimates . 









Ordinary Elementary Schools. 


Special (M.D.) Schools 


Age. 


Binet-Simon 
Tests. 


Reasoning 
Tests. 


Binet-Sirnon 

Tests. 


3- . 

4- . 

5- . 

6- . 

7- . 

8- . 

9- . 

10- . 

11- . 

12- . 

13- . 

14- . 






•33 
•37 

•40 
•56 
•71 
•62 
•48 
•53 
•57 
•60 
•35 
•41 


•78 
•81 
•64 
•59 


•55 

•70 
•77 
•68 
•56 
•62 
•49 
•53 
•64 



Correlations were obtained in a similar way for the children in the 
special schools (column 4 of Table XXX.). Here, owing to the small size 
of the groups, the probable errors are large throughout. They range, for all 
but the extreme ages, between ± -03 and ± -06. 

Among the normal children, the average correlation between the mental 
ages, as measured by the Binet-Simon tests on the one hand, and the estimates 
of intelligence as given by the teachers on the other hand, amounts to barely 
•50. If the order for the tests is based upon mental retardation or intellectual 
ratio, instead of upon mental age, the coefficients change but little. This is 
inevitable ; since within one and the same group the chronological age for 
the several members varies only within the latitude of twelve months. 
Possibly in certain schools and certain classes a slight and unavoidable in- 
accuracy in the teacher's estimates has somewhat reduced the coefficients. 
This certainly has occurred among the infants. With infants, indeed, all 
tests and all estimates are bound to be more or less unsatisfactory. But, 
even with the most ample allowance for sources of error such as these, the 
scale can by no means arrogate over all other methods for measuring in- 
telligence a sustained, indisputable supremacy. As a control experiment 
certain reasoning tests— a revised version of the tests previously described 
by me under the title of Syllogistic Problems 1 — were applied to the same 
children, and the results correlated with the same observational estimates. 
These tests are suited for older children only. But at every age available 
for comparison the correlations which they yield are higher than those fur- 
nished by the Binet scale. They average -70 as contrasted with -51. With 
these age-groups, therefore, the teacher's judgment, however inexact, cannot 
be impugned as the sole cause of the depreciation in the coefficients. If 
his estimates are correct enough to admit a high correlation in the one 



(M J. Exp. Ped„ loc, cit., I. 2, p. 101. Cf. also Appendix IV., p. 239. 



201 

experiment, they cannot be so incorrect as to generate a low correlation in 
the other. The inaccuracy lies not with the teacher, but with the test. Hence, 
with children in ordinary elementary schools, the Binet-Simon tests, as tests of 
intelligence, prove but moderately successful. 

Correlation with Intelligence among Defectives. 

Among the defectives the correlations between Binet-Simon tests and 
teachers' estimates rise, with one or two exceptions, to a much higher point. 
They average -62, as contrasted with -53 — the figure secured by averaging the 
coefficients obtained for the corresponding age-groups among the normals. 
Here, at least among the younger children, the results obtained by the 
Binet-Simon tests would compare not at all unfavourably with results 
obtained by other tests. 

Once again we may enquire whether peculiarities in the estimates supplied 
by the teacher are not more responsible than peculiarities in the estimates 
supplied by the tests. Do not the high correlations among the defectives 
suggest that here the teachers' estimates may be singularly dependable, just 
as the low correlations among the normals hinted that there the teachers' 
estimates might be at fault ? This is easily checked. By correlating the 
estimates of one teacher with that of a second we obtain a measure for the 
veracity of both. Accordingly, two independent estimates were, whenever 
possible, secured. Curiously enough, the correlations between the teachers' 
estimates — the "reliability coefficients," as they are commonly termed — 
proved to be smaller in the special schools than in the ordinary. In the 
former they averaged -81, in the latter -89. So conspicuously do defectives 
differ the one from the other that it should seem, indeed, a facile task to 
rank them ; yet those differences are themselves so anomalous, and affect 
various capacities in manners so diverse, 1 that, unless the two judges view 
the children from an angle identically the same, large discrepancies in the 
judgments may be discovered, and larger deviations from the actual fact 
may very plausibly be suspected. In any case, the superiority in the corre- 
lations among the defectives is too great to be credited simply to a superiority 
in the standard by which the test-results are tried. Hence, it may with 
some probability be inferred that as a test of intelligence the Binet-Simon 
scale is more trustworthy with defectives than with normals. 

The efficiency of the tests differs at different points upon the scale to no 
small extent. For normals the tests yield the most accurate measurements at 
the calendar ages of six, seven, and eight ; for defectives at the mental ages 
of V., VI., and VII. The superior accuracy at these levels seems traceable 
rather to the number than to the intrinsic excellence of the tests allotted to 
these years. With tests as with armies, where a few efficient units fail, a 
multitude of less efficient units may push home. At the ages of XI. and XII. 
the coefficients again increase. Here it is, as will be shown later, that the 
tests which are inherently the most valuable happen to be placed. The 
estimates appear least reliable in the middle of the scale, namely at ages IX. and 
X., and towards the extreme ends, namely, at ages II. to V., and ages XIII., 
and XIV. 

The Validity of the Several Tests considered Singly. 

The general merits of the Binet-Simon method as a whole are no longer 
contested so hotly as once they were. Most psychologists would concede to 
it a moderate utility ; few would allow that the earlier pretensions had been 
vindicated to the full. The agreement has been reached, not so much by 

(') Of. Distribution and Relation of Educational Abilities, pp. 63 and 64. 



202 

tangible figures and palpable results, as through the vague but cumulative 
impressions of a great and growing band of authoritative workers. The 
conclusions in the foregoing paragraphs bring but a fresh reinforcement to 
a view already prevailing. Touching the collective value of the tests, there- 
fore, taken in their entirety, nothing need be added to what I have already 
urged elsewhere. 1 

The relative value, on the other hand, of each individual test opens up 
a new enquiry, an enquiry in character far more complex, in results far more 
suggestive, and in approach far more obscure. There is, in the whole pro- 
cession of researches to which the Binet-Simon scale has given birth, no 
question at once so manifestly fundamental and yet so generally ignored. 

The Coefficient of Association. 

The method most effective for attacking this problem is not, at the 
outset, obvious. With Binet's marking a single test yields no graded order. 
The children either pass or fail. The commoner methods of calculating 
correlations are, therefore, applicable no longer. In technical language, the 
relationship is one of " association " rather than of " correlation." Accord- 
ingly, some form of " association coefficient " alone seems to offer a fair 
measure of the correspondence to be investigated. 

The application of this concept is new in psychology. Already, however, 
we have seen minor occasions for its use. In measuring the connection 
between delinquency and deficiency, between tested ability and sex or social 
status, its convenience has become plain. But it is in estimating the efficiency 
of mental tests, particularly mental tests of the dilemma type, that such a 
coefficient is most sorely wanted. Here, therefore, a brief note may be 
inserted to explain its nature and possibilities in this regard. 

Suppose, first, that no relationship of any kind obtains between superi- 
ority in intelligence and success in tests. We should then expect the same 
proportion of successes among the normal children as among the defective, 
and the same proportion of defective children among the successful as 
among the unsuccessful. The degree of association would be zero. Suppose, 
however, that all the normal children succeed, and all the defective children 
fail. Then the association might be regarded as complete. Its most natural 
measure would be + 1. The two cases are hypothetical limits. In practice 
we are but rarely confronted with a complete correspondence ; and never can 
we be sure that it is completely absent. Most frequently we encounter inter- 
mediate degrees. Here, therefore, intensity of association will be measured 
by a fraction, by an index varying between zero and unity. Now, it is not 
sufficient to compare the percentage of defectives passing with the percentage 
of normals passing ; and to treat the excess of the latter over the former as the 
measure of association. This is evident upon reflection. Consider a specific 
case — a deficit of say 40 per cent, in the proportion of defectives passing. 
The inference is that the test is satisfactory. But such a figure would be 
far more significant where the proportion of normals passing was 99 per cent, 
(and that of defectives, therefore, 59 per cent.), or again where it was 41 per 
cent, (and that of defectives, therefore, 1 per cent.), than where it had some 
intermediate value, say 70 per cent, (and that of defectives, therefore, 30 per 
cent.). 2 A more technical mode of comparison, some method of weighting 

t 1 ) Eugenics Review. July and April, 1914, " The Measurement of Intelligence by the Binet Tests." 
( 2 ) This fallacy is committed in almost every one of the rare researches that have essayed comparisons 
upon this point. Measured by the coefficient described below, the association would be ■ 66 in the first two 
cases, and only • 40 in the latter. I have said that the former case is more significant. I am not sure that 
it would be more reliable. In practice it is always well to avoid such extreme dichotomies. 



203 

these different possibilities, is, therefore, needed. For this purpose various 
formulae have been proposed. The one I have found most serviceable is 
that devised by Mr. Udny Yule, and termed by him the " coefficient of 
colligation." This coefficient becomes identical with the difference between 
the percentages of normals passing and defectives passing in one special case, 
the curious case of symmetry, where the sum of these two percentages is 
equal to one hundred, and where the proportion of normals that pass is the 
same as the proportion of defectives that fail. If, for example, 70 per cent, 
of the normals and 30 per cent, of the defectives pass, and, therefore, by 
symmetry, 30 per cent, of the normals and 70 per cent, of the defectives fail, 
then 70 minus 30, that is, 40, would be the coefficient of colligation. The 
condition of symmetry is rare in practice ; but theoretically it proves a con- 
venient one to adopt as a standard ; and all other cases can by a little 
arithmetic be reduced to comparable terms. The coefficient has thus a clear 
and concrete meaning ; and the calculation is simple. 1 

By this method, then, the diagnostic value of each test may be gauged. 
The test may be examined from three points of view : first, its accuracy in 
distinguishing defectives from normals ; secondly, its accuracy in distin- 
guishing brighter children from duller among normals ; and, thirdly, its 
accuracy in distinguishing the less deficient from the more deficient among 
defectives. 

The Diagnosis of Defectives as Distinguished from Normals. 

The object for which the Binet-Simon scale was originally contrived, the 
purpose for which it has been most commonly used, is the discrimination of 
the defective from the normal child. This is its prime function. How 
effectively does each test contribute to this aim ? The question can be 
answered by a comparison of the data recorded in Tables III. and IV. Take, 
for example, the dictation test — the test which, judged by rank-differences, 2 
appeared relatively the hardest for the defectives. In the special schools 
only 18-2 per cent, passed this test. In the ordinary schools 88-1 per cent, 
of the children of the same ages passed this test. 3 Calculated as described 
above, the coefficient of colligation is + -71. Its purport, roughly expressed, 
is that, other factors such as age being presumed to be equal, there is a 
reasonably high probability that, of two children thus tested, one failing 
and the other passing, the one who fails is defective, and the one who passes 
is normal. For one solitary test, therefore, the differentiation so furnished 
must be acknowledged as fairly refined. 

The coefficients computed in this way for the several tests are exhibited 
in Table XXXI. In that table the first column of figures may be accepted 
as measuring the efficacy with which any given test sifts and separates the 
children into normal and defective. Tests assigned to the first three and 
last three age-groups (III., IV., and V. — XIV., XV., and XVI.) do not lend 
themselves to this method of calculation, since, between the ages considered, 
the former are passed by practically all the genuine normals, and the latter 
by no genuine defectives. 4 

t 1 ) The details of the procedure, together with a graph for determining the coefficients by inspection 
will be found in an Appendix (p. 217). ( 2 ) Page 143, above. 

( 3 ) In either case the average cited is the average of the percentages for the several age-groups — those 
given in the body of the table— not the percentage based on the total of the actual number passing at each 
age. The latter would give undue weight to the largest age-group in either set of schools. 

( 4 ) As one or other of the proportions approximates either to 100 per cent, or to zero, the possibility of error 
rapidly increases ; and the coefficient, which then tends to be high, is apt to be illusory. This occurs in cases 
of two kinds : First, with tests so easy that the normals from the comparable age-groups all pass, except 
^or one or two accidental failures ; and, secondly, with tests so hard that special school children all fail, except 
for one or two accidental successes. The accidents may be due to the presence in the special schools of a 



204 

For the tests included in the table the average degree of association 
is -54. The figure implies that, on an average, for any given test, if the 
proportion of normals failing were the same as the proportion of defectives 
passing, then of the failures 77 per cent., or about three-quarters, would be 
defective, and the remainder normal. 1 This is but a moderately good result. 
On referring to the detailed figures it is plain that many of the individual 
tests are of comparatively little value. In suggestion, 36 per cent. — more than 
one in three — of the failures would, under the above condition, come from 
the normal group. Naming coins and months, describing and interpreting 
pictures, answering the easier practical questions, defining concrete terms by 
use, are somewhat surprisingly poor ; tests which, like these, depend largely 
upon experience apparently reveal intelligence only through a dim, dis- 
torting medium. On the other hand, some of the linguistic tests seem to 
offer bright if broken glimpses of it, as through fragments of clear glass. 
Mixed sentences and rhymes, for example, and (though the coefficients are 
here not so high as might have been expected) sentence-building, difficult 
questions and absurdities, provide, with older pupils, an excellent opportunity 
of watching the working of their minds. Next to these, the scholastic tests — 
dictation and reading (two and six facts) — and the memory tests — sixteen 
syllables, five and seven numbers — appear definitely to mark off the ordinary 
from the special school children. But, as in many cases the defective 
children were originally nominated for special schools on the very grounds 
of incapacity for scholastic work, of general inability to learn, and as in some 
cases they were actually transferred after an examination largely resembling 
the Binet-Simon method, the evidence thus elicited is hardly conclusive. 

Diagnosis of Intelligence among Defectives and among Normals. 

The problem of diagnostic value may be approached by two other paths. 
Since the children of the special schools range from high-grade imbeciles up 
to ability which is nearly average, the value of each test may be judged by 
the delicacy with which it distinguishes the duller defectives from the less 
dull. And since the ordinary schools contain numerous children whose 
intelligence as tested differs little, if at all, from that of many a so-called 
defective, a further corroboration may be sought in the accuracy with which 
each test discriminates the dullest normals from the brighter. 

In either type of school the teacher's ranking for intelligence provides 
a standard of comparison. To increase its reliability, particularly where 
separate lists for consecutive school classes were mortised together, the 
larger discrepancies between the original order and the order derived from 
the Binet-Simon scale in its entirety were closely scrutinised and discussed 
in detail with the teachers. With their assistance a revised order of merit 
was then constructed for comparison with the results supplied by each 
individual test. 

child normal in intelligence, or to the presence in the elementary school of a child either defective, but not 
yet transferred, or possibly so nervous as to make slips with tests he should pass. With such extreme per- 
centages the addition of one or more accidental cases will sometimes reduce the coefficient by 10 or 20 per cent. ; 
their elimination would raise the coefficiency to unity, since, by the definition here adopted, when all the 
normals pass or all the defectives fail the association is complete, regardless of the proportions failing or 
succeeding in the opposite group. For these reasons the tests for the ages specified in the text were omitted. 

Even if the diagnosis were valid only in one direction, tests revealing such high associations would be of 
i nestimable value, provided that the line between success and failure was natural and sure But that line 
is both arbitrary and uncertain. With the Binet-Simon tests, as with most mental tests, there are in the 
actual performances degrees of success and degrees of failure. Of these the marking takes no account. The 
division it draws is thus purely conventional. A happy chance may tilt a borderline child into nominal 
success, and bad luck tip him into nominal failure. 

(') Since 77 -(100 -77) = 54. 



205 



TABLE XXXI. 

Coefficients of Colligation (oj) between Success in Tests and 
Intelligence as Estimated by Teacher. 





Test. 


Defectives n . 
and Normals. nete 


ctjves. No 


rmals. 




Mixed Sentences 


•80 


71 


58 




Absurdities 


•58 


64 


61 




Difficult Questions 


•62 


52 


46 




Sentence Building (1) 


•63 


48 


50 




3 Rhymes 


•77 




40 




Definition (Abstract) 


— 




42 




Dictation 


■71 


61 


31 




Memory Drawing 


■51 


58 


41 




Missing Features 


•58 


47 


40 




Count 20 to 1 


•53 


51 


43 




Differences (Concrete) 


•50 


49 


47 




Reading (6 Facts) 


•62 


49 


32 




Re -Statement 




— 




38 




60 Words 




•62 


40 


39 




Transcription 




•64 


49 


29 




Diamond 




•64 


39 


37 




Definition (Class) . 




•60 


41 


39 




Differences (Abstract) 


— 




37 




Pence and Halfpence 


•48 


48 


42 




Change 


•43 


50 


44 




5 Weights 




•46 


47 


42 




16 Syllables . . 




■62 


36 


35 




5 Numbers . . 




•64 


38 


31 




Right and Left 




•46 


47 


40 




26 Syllables . . 




— 




34 




Reading (2 Facts) 


•65 


40 


29 




Sentence Building (2) 


•54 


43 


34 




4 Numbers 


•61 


37 


34 




13 Pennies 


•61 


43 


29 




Differences ( King, President ) 


— 




32 




Problems 


•68 


35 


26 




Triple Order 


— 


35 


41 




6 Numbers 


•48 


33 


36 




Fingers 


•56 


35 


28 




Picture (Interpretation) . . 


•38 


46 


31 




Divided Card 


•49 


39 


31 




6 Syllables 


— 


32 


32 




4 Pennies 


— 


34 


31 




Reversed Triangle 


— 




30 




Easy Questions 


•32 


45 


30 




9 Coins 


•32 


40 


31 




10 Syllables 


— 


33 


29 




Square 


— 


31 


30 




Folded Paper 


— 


— 


31 




4 Coins 


•56 


30 


23 




3 Numbers 


— 


31 


•27 




Definition (Use) 


•43 


29 


•29 




Comparing Faces 


— 


31 


■25 




Days of Week 


•57 


23 


•20 




2 Numbers 


— 


29 


•25 




Picture (Description) 


•45 


28 


•24 




Date 


•53 


19 


•22 




2 Weights 


— 


29 


•24 




4 Colours 


— 


33 


•21 




Picture (Enumeration) . . 


— 


26 


•25 




Morning and Afternoon . . 


— 


29 


•23 




2 Lines 









27 


•24 




• 4 Numbers . 









27 


•24 




Naming 






— 


24 


■25 




Pointing 






— 


24 


•24 




Months 






•39 


22 


•16 




Age . . 






— 


26 


•22 




Sex 






— 


20 


•23 




Surname 






— 


25 


•18 




Suggestion . 






•28 


18 


■15 



206 

On a cursory view the foregoing method for extracting a coefficient of 
association might seem to be inapplicable. An order of merit does not split 
a group into two distinct portions, as a test will divide it into those who 
succeed and those who do not. Each test, moreover, draws the line of 
division at a different level — one may cut off ten per cent., another forty or 
fifty. x Even had the teachers been asked to bisect each age-group into bright 
and dull, the point of cleavage being determined once and for all, the mere 
fact that one test cuts the group near the centre and another near the extreme 
end, while the teachers' division remained constant, might alter the magni- 
tude of the coefficient quite apart from the merits of the test. To obviate 
these difficulties the following principle was adopted. The teachers' list was 
divided into two sections ; and for each test the division was made afresh. 
The point of separation was always chosen so that the brighter section con- 
tained, as nearly as possible, the same number of children as had passed the 
test. Thus, if with a given test thirty children are successful out of sixty, 
complete association requires that these thirty shall be the top thirty in the 
teacher's list for intelligence. On this basis, and with these preliminaries, 
the colligation coefficient was, by the formula given above, computed for 
each age-group separately, and the several coefficients then averaged. 

The average coefficients are shown for each test in the last two columns 
of Table XXXI. For all the tests attempted by both defectives and normals 
the grand averages are -37 and -32 respectively. Thus the agreement between 
test and teacher's estimate proves somewhat closer among the defectives 
than among the normals. But, with the exception of absurdities and mixed 
sentences, the value of any single test, as a criterion of normal intelligence, proves 
singularly low. And, as was perhaps to have been prophesied, the broader 
the grouping, the better the result : with the primary division of the whole 
population into defectives and normals, the proportion of failures and 
successes shows a nicer correspondence than with further separation of these 
two smaller and selected groups into more intelligent and less intelligent 
sub -divisions. 

Conclusions as to Relative Value of the Several Tests. 

In order of their efficiency, as revealed by each of the three coefficients, 
the several tests have been ranked, re-ranked, and ranked again. In Table 
XXXI they are arranged in the order furnished by averaging the three 
gradings thus obtained. 

Judged in this way, suggestion, as a test of intelligence, appears con- 
sistently worthless. Many of the simple " general information " questions 
asked of the younger children — age, sex, surname, knowing features, common 
objects, colours, time of day, and date — have also but a nugatory value. 
Contrary to the predictions of many, the picture test, prized by Binet as 
one of his best, yields, in all three forms, indifferent results. Mere discrimina- 
tion of pairs of lines, weights, or faces, and — at any rate, with normals 
— memory for the shorter series of numbers and for the days of the week and 
the months of the year, have likewise little to do with intelligence. 

Of all the tests, the most penetrative are the mixed sentences and the 
absurdities : these cut to the centre. There are perhaps some thirty more 
that plunge well below the surface. The rest are superficial. To class the 
more satisfactory tests according to their apparent psychological nature is 
a somewhat difficult task. They look, to a casual glance, most heterogeneous. 
In general, they number tests which necessitate neither mere memorised 

(') In practice, when using almost any kind of association coefficient, it seems always wiser to avoid, if 
possible, any extreme divergence from 50 per cent ; here, for example, the age groups should be chosen so 
that (of course, within wide limits) the division given by the test is nearly eaual. 



207 

knowledge nor yet mental capacity or skill of any simple kind, but rather the 
application of that knowledge and the use of that skill in the solution of original 
problems. Among the money tests, the more serviceable — adding pennies 
and halfpennies, and giving change — belong manifestly to this type. So, too, 
counting backward is far more effective than straightforward counting ; and 
to state the day before yesterday, or the day after to-morrow, would prove a 
test of much greater utility than Binet's request to recite in their accustomed 
order all the days of the week. In some the logical element is conspicuous — 
as in absurdities, difficult questions, definition of abstract terms, and of 
concrete terms by class, stating differences between concrete and abstract 
terms, and summarising a philosophical sentiment. Judged by the teachers' 
estimates, practical or non-verbal tests — such as observing missing features, 
drawing from memory, drawing a rhombus, arranging weights in order, and 
perhaps performing a triple order — should be accorded greater weight in the 
selection of defectives. On the other hand, the scholastic tests of reading, 
writing, and spelling, and the harder memory tests, though good, are not 
so trustworthy as our previous comparison of defectives with normals allowed 
them to appear. The high diagnostic value of finding rhymes, of finding 
sixty words in three minutes, and of finding a single sentence containing three 
given words, implies perhaps that a test of inventiveness or of fertility in 
association might form a symptomatic exercise. In the cruder puzzle tests, 
where blind chance, crude traps, and simple catches have freer play — left 
hand, right ear, divided card, cut paper — the correlation with intelligence 
seems attenuated or obscured. 

The heterogeneous nature of the more valuable tests is quite consistent 
with the hypothesis of a common intellectual factor — a central function 
radiating, in various directions and in different degrees, through all mental 
activities of whatever kind ; and it points with no unsteady finger to the 
need for determining, by adequate modes of experiment and statistics, the 
utility of each individual test regarded as a measure of that function. The 
more profitable lines of advance, the more fertile regions of research, what 
types of test deserve most study, what kinds of mental function are most 
significant, this the foregoing conclusions, and the results gathered by the 
way, may serve in some measure to suggest. 

10. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 

The evidence furnished by actual applications of the tests has now been 
analysed. In its light, the arrangement of the scale and the validity of the 
method, as revised and re-standardised in my first memorandum, has been 
fully examined and freely discussed. The outstanding conclusions may be 
recapitulated in the following terms. 

For normal London school children the age-assignments for the several 
tests differ widely from those prescribed by Binet. Binet's own dis- 
tribution has had to be stiffened for the earlier years, and eased for the later. 
In his original arrangement the tests for younger children were much too 
easy ; those for older children a little too hard ; while for adolescents and 
supernormals there were, and still are, practically no fit tests whatever. In 
the new arrangement here presented, the final order of difficulty seems 
moderately stable, and the increments of difficulty moderately uniform, 
except for the extreme ages. For normals the order of difficulty bears a 
general resemblance to the average order suggested by previous investi- 
gators ; but differs in certain essentials from that given in the French and 
the leading American recensions. For defectives the order of difficulty 
departs significantly from that obtained for normals ; and the differences 
imply that the tests are not tests of pure capacity. 



208 

Between normals and defectives the line of demarcation has been pro- 
visionally fixed, for children, at a mental ratio of 70 per cent., and, for adults, 
at a mental age of eight. 

Numerous factors affect the measurement of a child's intelligence by 
means of the Binet-Simon scale. Sex influences it but little ; social status 
rather more ; educational, and particularly linguistic, attainments more 
profoundly than any other factor measurable with exactitude ; while quali- 
tative conditions, such as temperament and emotional attitude, affect it in 
a degree that is too variable to fix and too elusive to define. Among delin- 
quents, indeed, paucity of educational attainments and peculiarities of 
emotional attitude will debase their performances and impoverish their 
replies to a degree that may be gravely deceptive ; and, unless duly dis- 
counted, may engender an unwarrantable suspicion that the bulk of them are 
mentally defective. 

In diagnostic value the single tests differ vastly. Many are scholastic ; 
most are linguistic ; few yield a high correlation with intelligence. The 
numerous educational tests have an occasional value ; the rarer tests of 
reasoning a permanent value ; and some tests, such as suggestion, no value 
at all. In discriminating the child of the special school from the child of 
the ordinary school, the scale as a whole is tolerably successful ; in grading 
the special school children amongst themselves it is almost as efficient ; in 
grading the normal children amongst themselves it is less accurate than 
other tests that are now to hand ; and in detecting supernormal ability it 
is altogether invalidated by the anomalies and the lacuna? among the 
problems for the higher mental years. 

Such conclusions will be thought but a faint and faltering recommenda- 
tion for the Binet-Simon scale. But is there any better scale to fill its place ? 
The ordinary function of such tests should be to estimate intelligence among 
children backward in attainments and still young in age, but in other respects 
forming for the examiner an unsolved problem, an unknown Perhaps. This 
requirement can no longer be postponed. For such a purpose the Binet- 
Simon scale is unquestionably superior to the unaided judgment of the 
examiner ; for such a purpose, too, there is as yet, besides the Binet-Simon 
scale, no other method available, at once surpassing it in simplicity, equalling 
it in accuracy, or approaching it in prestige. Workers untrained in a psycho- 
logical laboratory feel instantly that here is a non-technical instrument 
which they can understand and apply. By its aid the intelligence of tens of 
thousands has been tested and measured — young and old, supernormal and 
defective, moral and immoral, the convict in jail and the pauper in the alms- 
house, rural labourers and university students, schools by the hundred, 
army recruits by the battalion, in short, men, women, and children 
from almost every sphere of life. Pending the construction of some more 
scientific scale, whose validity has been as widely tested and whose authority 
is as generally revered, the Binet-Simon scale must, for rough and practical 
purposes, still hold and monopolise the field. 

But its value should not be overrated ; and its temporary adoption should 
not be suffered to block the path of further enquiry. The unwarranted 
claims advanced on its behalf by votaries in foreign quarters have among 
academic psychologists in this country become a commonplace and a byword. 
The routine examiner, it is true, busy with practical diagnosis, remains 
generally unconscious of the frail foundation upon which his standards of 
comparison repose. But the rigourist and the precisian have been disposed 
unflinchingly to abandon — at any rate, for scientific purposes — a scale whose 
worth is so ill attested, and whose construction is so feebly based. In its 
place they look for the elaboration of some fresh scheme, established anew 



209 

upon investigations, broader and more detailed, into the reliability, the 
variability, and the significance of the numerous mental tests that are now 
ready to hand. 

Such a quest is imperative. But it will entail long years of co-operative 
research. The period will be longer still before the fruits can command the 
measure of popular recognition already accorded to the present scale. 

Meanwhile, when new buildings have not been finished, it is wiser to 
repair than to demolish the old. While waiting for the slow and sure, we 
must make shift with the rough and the ready. The need is urgent ; the 
field is vast. Throughout the country there is a cry for a practical mental 
test — for a handy method, which can be immediately applied by teachers, 
doctors, and social workers ; for a snapshot instrument which can be easily 
manipulated by the routine examiner, engrossed with the administration of 
the Mental Deficiency Acts and too pressed to await the experience or the 
appliances of a laboratory ; for a pocket rule, which will furnish diagnostic 
measurements in terms of some plain concept, like the mental year, obvious, 
moderately exact, and instantly intelligible to a magistrate or a jury, to 
whom the technicalities of percentiles and standard deviations would be 
esoteric gibberish. To satisfy such a demand, scientific exactitude may 
pardonably be postponed for the prompt delivery of an acceptable, work- 
able substitute. And such a substitute, provisional yet ready-made, is to 
be found in the Binet-Simon scale, 



APPENDIX I. 



AGE-ASSIGNMENTS FOR THE SEVERAL TESTS. 

In Table XXXII. I have collected the age-assignments suggested for the 
several Binet tests by the results of the chief preceding investigations. Three 
shorter compilations, similar in aim, have been published — an American 
by Carleton Bell, a German by Meumann, and an Italian by Safhotti. 
From these the present differs chiefly by the addition of data more 
recently published, including more particularly those of eight or nine English 
investigators. With the exception of the earliest, English investigations, 
even when available at the time of publication, have been almost entirely 
ignored by the foregoing compilers. 

In comparing the various age-assignments then available, the American 
compiler states that " there is a surprising agreement in the results of the 
different investigators." Such a conclusion could hardly be drawn from the 
present compilation. Indeed, my chief object in publishing such a collation 
as the table which follows is to emphasise the absence hitherto of any ac- 
ceptable set of age-assignments. If anything, the figures minimise the dis- 
crepancies ; for often, when an investigator had no data whatever, and 
sometimes even when he had obtained contradictory data, he has still pro- 
nounced his adherence to Binet's own assignment. But even Binet's own 
assignments, it will be seen, differed considerably from each other and from 
those indicated by his experimental data. 

The ages entered below are, in the first place, those expressly suggested 
by the investigators themselves, whenever such assignments are recorded in 
their published articles. A difficulty, however, arises when the investigator 
departs, without explanation, and sometimes apparently by oversight, from 
his avowed criterion. Moore, for example, adopting a 70 per cent, criterion, 
definitely retains Binet's age-assignment for counting four pennies and de- 
scribing pictures, although in his tables nearly, if not quite, 100 per cent, 
pass the test at the preceding age. In such cases I have seldom ventured to 
correct the assignments given by the investigators themselves. On the 
other hand, where no assignment is so given, I have myself inserted in 
brackets any suggestion that seemed deducible from the investigator's own 
figures and criteria. Where neither assignment nor criteria are suggested 
by the investigator himself, I have, after the practice of previous compilers, 
used a 75 per cent, criterion. 

The following abbreviations are used : — 

Ad. = adult. 

a = altered ; i.e., the test referred to was modified considerably by 

the investigator named, 
e = judged by the investigator specified to be too easy for the assign- 
ment proposed in Binet's 1908 scale, and therefore to be assigned 
to an earlier unspecified age. 
h = judged by the investigator specified to be too hard for the assign- 
ment proposed in Binet's 1908 scale. 
210 



211 

r = rejected by the investigator specified as unsuitable. 

s = considered by the investigator specified to be too much influenced 

by school attainments, 
t = considered by the investigator specified to be too much influenced 

by training, 
m = considered by the investigator specified to be too mechanical. 

From a study of the table two obvious conclusions may be drawn. First, 
a reinvestigation of the age-assignments was urgently desirable. Secondly, 
such assignments will probably require to be investigated afresh for different 
conditions and different localities. 

Of the sixty-five tests, only four are assigned to the same age-group by 
all investigators. These are without exception three-year-old tests which 
have not been scrutinised very thoroughly or by very many experimenters. 
With these exceptions, for not one test is there complete agreement as to the 
age to which it should be assigned. For eight tests, again mostly tests which . 
but few investigators have used, the assignments differ only by one year. 
The commonest result, occurring in some fifteen cases, is for a test to be 
assigned now to a year above, now to a year below, the original or the average 
assignment — thus fluctuating over a range of three years. In about the same 
number the assignments spread over a range of four years ; and in almost as 
many cases, namely, fourteen, over a range of five. Three tests — definition 
(abstract), building one sentence out of three words, mixed sentences — have a 
range of six years ; four tests — absurdities, seven numbers, three rhymes, 
twenty-six syllables — a range of seven ; the test of five weights has a range of 
eight years ; and that of sixty words a range of nine. * Several of these extremes 
are explicable by differences in procedure. This explanation, however, is 
neither the sole nor the chief one. The procedure for memorising seven numbers 
is fairly definite, and simple to comply with ; yet, while Binet assigns it to 
age XV. and Miss Johnston to adult years, such reliable investigators as 
Bobertag and Miss Taylor assign it to age X. Progress from year to year 
being more conspicuous at a younger age, the fluctuation in the range for 
tests at this period is much smaller. Yet even so straightforward a test as 
naming the four primary colours is assigned by Miss Taylor and by Decroly 
and Degand to age IV., and by Binet, Bobertag, Saffiotti, and others to 
double that age, namely, to age VIII. The two most stable tests appear to 
be counting backwards and pointing to right and left. 

As a rule,- the age-assignments based on the present investigation con- 
form fairly well with the most usual assignments of previous investigators. 
In four tests, however, an assignment is suggested which has never been 
put forward before. In two cases the novelty is perhaps accidental. Six 
syllables, now shown as the easiest test for age IV., has, by the few who 
have pronounced upon it, been assigned hitherto to age III., the age pre- 
scribed by Binet. Twenty-six syllables, assigned here to XL or XII., there 
to XV. or Adult, has never been awarded the intermediate age of XIV. 
But for suggestion no previous investigator has obtained an age-assignment 
so high as XIII., 2 or for change one so low as VIII. The innovations may 
be due to accidents of the investigation or to peculiarities of London children. 
It is an issue which further research can alone decide. 

(*) Adult age is here throughout counted as equivalent to age XVI. 

( 2 ) My results would agree with Miss Taylor's in making this test far easier than Binet believed, were 
it not for the conscientious efforts of my older and brighter subjects to find minute differences as described 
above (p. 195). The ease of " Change " appears to be due partly to the practical familiarity of the London 
child with money values and shopping and partly to the emphasis placed at an earlier age in London schools 
upon problem arithmetic, often illustrated in concrete form by real or imitation coins. 



212 



TABLE 
AGE-ASSIGNMENTS FOR THE SEVERAL TESTS 



« 




Binet and Si 


mon. 




=3 
2 § 


•6 

T3 


J 


so 


i 


5 














o bo 


^3 
o 


"3 


O 


o 


.5 














fip 


O 


£ 


pq 


o 


>-5 


Test. 


1905 


1908 


1909 


1911 


1911 

(L. & M. 


1910 


1911 


1911 


1911 


1911 


1911 


Age III 
























Pointing 


III 


III 


III 


III 


— 


e 


III 


— 


— 


— 


— 


2 Numbers 


III? 


III 


III 


III 


— 


— 


III 


— 


— 


— 


— 


Sex 


— 


IV 


IV 


IV 


— 


t 


IV 


— 


— 


— 


— 


Surname 


— ■ 


III 


III 


III 


— 


t 


III 


— 


— 


— 


— 


Naming 


Ilia 


IV 


IV 


IV 


— 


e 


IV 


— 


— 


— 


— 


Picture (Enumeration) 


nia 


III 


III 


III 


— 


— 


III 


— 


— 


— 




Age IV 
























6 Syllables 


— 


III 


III 


III 


— 


— ■ 


III 


— 


■ — 


— 


— 


3 Numbers 


V 


IV 


IV 


IV 


— 


— 


IV 


— 


— 


— 


— 


4 Pennies 


— 


V 


V 


V 


— 


t 


V 


e 


V 


V 


— 


2 Lines 


Va 


IV 


IV 


IV 


— ■ 


— 


IV 


— 


— 


— 


— 


Comparing Paces 


— 


VI 


VI 


VI 


VII 


Ill 


VI 


— 


VE 


VE 


VI 


Age V 
























Triple Order 


— 


VI 


VI 


vri 


VII 


III 


VI 


h 


VE 


VEI 


V 


Square 


— ■ 


V 


V 


V 


— 


— 


V 


■ — . 


V 


VI 


— 


10 Syllables 


— 


V 


V 


V 


— 


■ — ■ 


V 


■ — ■ 


V 


V 


— 


Age 


— 


VI 


VI 


— 


— 


t 


■ — ■ 


h 


VI 


vn 


— 


Morning and Afternoon 


— 


VI 


vt 


VI 


VI 


— 


VI 


— 


VII 


jrx 


VEII 


4 Colours 


— 


VIII 


VIII 


vn 


VIII 


IV 


vn 


e 


VIII 


VEII 


VI 


4 Numbers 


— 


— 


— 


— 


— 


— ■ 


— 


— 


V 


— 


— 


2 Weights 


V 


V 


V 


V 


— 


— 


V 


— 


V 


V 


— 


Age VI 
























Fingers 


— 


VII 


VII 


— 


— 


t 


— 


e 


VII 


VII 


— 


13 Pennies 


— 


VH 


IV? 


VI 


VII 


m 


VII 


e 


VI 


vn 


VE 


Diamond 


— 


VH 


VII 


VI 


VII 


. — . 


VII 


h 


VII 


VEII 


VEI 


Transcription 


— 


VII 


VII 


— 


— 


st 


— 


— 


Vllr 


VEII 


— 


Days of Week 


— 


IX 


IX 


— 


— - 


m 


VEII 


e 


VEII 


IX 


— 


4 Coins 


■ — 


VII 


IV? 












Vila 


VUa 


— 


Divided Card 


— 


V 


V 


V 


— 


— 


V 


h 


VE 


vn 


— 


Definition (Use) 


V 


VI 


VI 


VI 


VI 


Ill 


VI 


— 


V 


V 


VI 


5 Numbers 


VII 


VEI 


VII 


VIII 


IX 


— 


vin 


h 


VII 


IX 


VIII 


Picture (Description) 


— 


VII 


IV ? 


VII 


VII 


■ — ■ 


vn 


h 


VII 


VEI 


vn 


16 Syllables 


VEI-XI 


VI 


VI 


— 


— 


— 


— . 


h 


VI 


VII 


— 


Eight and Left 


— 


VI 


VI 


vn 


VII 


— 


VI 


— 


VII 


VEI 


VII 


Age VII 
























Missing Features 


— 


VII 


VII 


vni 


VIII 


— 


VII 


— 


vn 


VEI 


VEII 


Pence and Halfpence 


■ — 


VIII 


VIII 


vn 


VIII 


— 


Villa 


— 


VII 


VEII 


VEI 


Differences (Concrete) 


VII 


vin 


VIII 


vin 


VIII 


e 


VIII 


— 


VEII 


IX 


— 


Dictation 


— 


VIII 


VIII 


— 


— 


st 


— 


h 


VUr 


IX 


— 


Age VIII 
























Heading (2 Pacts) . . 


— 


VIII 


VIII 


— 


— 


st 


— 


— 


IX ? 


IXa 


— 


Easy Questions 


Vila 


X 


X 


IX 


IX 


— 


X 


e 


VEII 


VIII 


X 


Count 20 to 1 


— 


vin 


VIII 


VIII 


VIII 


st 


VEII 


h 


vm 


IX 


IX 




— 


IX 


IX 


VIII 


VIII 


— 


IX 


— 


IX 


X? 


X 




— 


IX 


IX 


IX 


IX 


— 


IX 


h 


IX 


IX 


— 


6 Numbers 


— 


— 


— 


— 


— 


— 


X 


— 


X 


— 


— 


Age IX 




























X 


X 


IX 


IX 


m 


IX 


— 


(X) 


(X)? 


IX 




— 


X 


X 


IX 


IX 


— 


X 


e 


X 


X 


XI 


Heading (6 Pacts) . . 


— 


IX 


IX 


— 


— 


— 




h 


(Xa) 


Xa 


— 


Definition (Class) 


— 


IX 


IX 


IX 


X 


— 


IX 


h 


IX 


IX 


X 


Age X 
























5 Weights 


XIa 


IX 


IX 


X 


XII 


V-VI 


IX 


h 


IX 


X? 


X 


Sentence Building (2) 


■ — 


X 


Xa? 


X 


xn 


XI 


X 


— . 


X 


■ — ■ 


XIII 


Memory Drawing 


IX-XI? 


— 


— 


X 


XII 


— 


X 


— 


— 


— 


— 


Age XI 
























Absurdities 


— 


XI 


xn 


X 


XII 


VI 


XI 


— 


XI-XII 1 


— 


XIII 


Difficult Questions . . 


Vll-XIa 


X 


X 


X 


XII 


— 


X? 


— 


XI-XII 


— 


XI 


60 Words 


■ — ■ 


XI 


XII 


XII 


xni? 


e 


XI 


h 


— 


— 


XII 


7 Numbers 


— 


XII 


XV 


XV 


. — . 


— 


XII 


h 


X 


— 


Ad. 


Sentence Building (1) 


XII? 


XI 


XII 


XII 


XII 


— 


XI 


— 


XI-XII 1 


— 


XV 



213 
XXXII. 
ACCORDING TO DIFFERENT INVESTIGATORS. 





=3 




a 






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1911 


1912 


1912 


1913 


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1914 


1914 


1914 


1916 


1916 


1917 


1917 


T919 


. 






III 










III 








III 


III 


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in 




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III 


h 





. 


III 














IV 




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III 


IV 


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in 


— 


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III 


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— ■ 


IV 


■ — 


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IVa 


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IV 


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in? 


— 


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III 


— 


IV 


IV 


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IV 


IV 


IV 




IV 


VII 


VI 


VI 


V 


IV 


V 


Va 


V 


VE 


V 


V 


IV 


e 


IV 


VI 


VE 


VII 


IV 


VI 


V 


VE 


VI 


VI 


V 


V 


V 


— 


IV 


■ — 


V 


— 


IV 


V 


VII 


V 


V 


VI 


V 


IV 


V 


h 


V? 


— 


V 


— 


V 


V 


rVa 


r ? 


VE 


— 


V 


(IVa) 


V 


— 


V? 


— 


— 


— 


— 


VI 


— 


VI 


— 


— 


— 


V 


V 


— 


V 


— 


VI 


VEI 


V 


VE 


V 


VE 


V 


VI 


V 


VI 


V 


— 


V 


VIII 


r 


VE 


V 


VI 


— 


V 


IV 


VEII 


V 


V 


V 


— 


VE 


— 


— 


— 


— 


— 


IV 


— 


. — 


■ — 


— 


IV 


V 




III 


~ 


\ 




V 


V 


— 


VI 


VII 


V? 


VI 


V 


V 


— 


VI 





VEI 








VE 





VI 








VII 


VI 


— 


VI 


VII 


r 


VI 


VEI 


VI 




V 


VE 


VEIIa 


VI 


VE 


VE 


— 


VII 


vri 


VIII 


VIII 


VI 


VE 


VII 


VII 


VI 


VEII 


VE 


VEI 


VI 


VE 


VII? 


— 


r 


— 


— 


VI 


— 


VI 


— 


— 


— 


— 


VI 


e 


VII? 


— 


r 


VIII 


— 


VI 


— 


VII 


— 


— 


— 


VII 


VI 


— 


VII 


— 


VII 


— 


— 


VII 


VEIa 


VIII 


■ — • 


— 


— 


VI 


VI 


— 


IV 


— 


V 


— 


VI 


V 


VII 


VEII 


VEI 


Villa 


V 


V 


VE 


— 


IV 


— 


VI 


VI 


VE 


VI 


— 


VI 


VI 


VII 


VE 


V 


VI 


— 


VIH 


■ — 


VEI 


VEII 


VEI 


VE 


■ — . 


VII 


VI 


VEII 


VI 


VII 


VI 


— 


VII 


— ■ 


VII 


VIII 


VI 


VE 


— 


VI 


VII 


— 


VEI 


VII 


VE 


— 


VII 


— 


— 


— 


— 


VEI 


Va 


vni 


. — ■ 


— 


— 


VI 


VI 


Vlli 


VI 


~ 


VE 


VEI 


VI 


VI 


— 


VI 


VE 


— 


VE 


VI 


VI 


— 


VII 


— 


VEI 


VE 


vin 


VI 


VI 


V 


VII 


VEII 


VEI 


VI 


VII 


— 


IX 


— 


VIII 


IXa 


VIII 


IX 


VEII 


VEI 


VEI 


X 


VII 


(IXa) 


VII 


— 


VIII 


— ■ 


VEII 


VI 


VII 


VIII 


— 


VII 


VEI 


VEI 


VEI 


VII 


VII 




VIII 


~ 


r 




— 


VEI 


— 


VEIr 


— 


— 


— 


VIII 


VEI 


h 


IX? 


— 


r 








IX 





r 


_ 








VEII 


— 


IXa 


— 


X 


X 


— 


X 


VEII 


VII 


VII 


VEII ? 


VEII 


VEII 


VEII 


h 


VIII 


— 


VIII 


IX 


IX? 


IX 


— ■ 


VII 


VIII 


VEII 


VEII 


VEII 


VEII 


e 


IX 


IX 


IX 


X 


IX? 


IX 


— 


r 


VEII 


VIII 


VIII 


IX 


VEII 


— 


X 


X 


IX 


XI 


— 


IX 


— ■ 


VIII 


IX 


XI 


IX 


IX 


VIII 




X 




~~ 


XI 








— ■ 


■ — 


— 


— 


(Xa) 


VIII 


— 


— 


— 


VIII 


IX 





X 


r 




IX 


IX 


IX 


IX 


IX 


— 


X?r 


— ■ 


IX 


VII 


— 


X 


— 


— 


IX 


— 


X 


(VEIIa) 


IX 




XII? a 


■ — 


r 


— 


— 


IX 


(IXa) 


— 


— 


— . 


— 


(Xa) 


IX 






X 


IX 


X 




XII 


X 


— 


IX 


— 


X 


VEIIa 


IX 





IX 





IX 


X 


_ 


XII 


VEII 




X 


VIII 


IX 


IX 


X 


— 


XI? 


XI-XII 


r 


XI 


■ — 


X 


— 





X 


— 


X 


IX 


X 




X 




X 


XI-XII 


— 


— 


— 


— 


IX 


— 


IX 


X 


X 


— 


XII 


XI-XII 


XI 


XI 


_ 


XII 






XI? 


XI 


X 


X 


XI 


— 


XI 


XI-XII 


r 


X 


— 


X 


— 





X 


(XI ?)r 


X 


X 


XI 


— 


XV? 


XIII-XIV 


XI 


VII-VIII 


— 


XV 


— 


— 


XI 




XI 


X 


XI 


— 


XIII 


— 


■ XII 


XII 


— 


XIII 


— 


— 


X 


— 


XI 


(XlVa) 


XI 


— 


X 


xin-xiv 


X 


XI 


— 


X 


— 


— 


XII 


— 


XI 


— 


XI 



214 



TABLE 















=3 


■6 




bs> 










Binet and Simon. 




o « 


.2 


0> 


a 


3 














o bo 


T3 




,Q 


o 


















O 

O 


£ 


O 

M 


O 


c 

1-3 


Test. 


1905 


1908 


1909 


1911 


1911 
(L. & M.) 


1910 


1911 


1911 


1911 


1911 


1911 


Age XII 
























3 Rhymes 


IX+ 


XII 


XV 


XV 


— 


— ■ 


XI 


e 


xi-xn 


— 


XV 


Mixed Sentences 


— 


XI 


XII 


XII 


XII 


— 


XI 


h 


XI-XII 


— 


XIII 


Picture (Interpretation) 


— 


XII 


XV 


XV 


— 


— 


XV 


— 


— 


— 


— 


Age XIII 
























Suggestion 


XI 


— ■ 


— ■ 


xn 


■ — ■ 


■ — ■ 


XII 


— 


— 


— 


— 


Problems 


— 


XII 


XV? 


XV 


— 


— 


xn 


h 


— 


— 


— 


Age XIV 
























26 Syllables 


— 


XII 


XV 


XV 


— 


— 


XII 


h 


X 


— 


XV 


Definition (Abstract) 


IX? 


XI 


xn 


xn 


XIII? 


xm 


XII 


h 


xi-xn 


— 


XIV 


Age XV 
























Folded Paper 


XII 


XIII 


— 


Ad. 


■ — ■ 


h 


Ad. 


h 


— 


— . 


— 


Differences (Abstract) 


■ — . 


XIII 


— 


Ad. 


— 


h 


Ad. 


h 


— 


— 


— 


Reversed Triangle . . 


— 


XIII 


— 


Ad. 


— 


h 


Ad. 


h 


— 


— 


— 


Age XVI 
























Re-Statement 


— 


— 


— 


Ad. 


— 


— 


Ad. 


— 


— - 


— 


— 


Differences (King, 
























President) 


— 


— 


— 


Ad. 


— 


— 


Ad. 


— 


— 


— 


— 



The following are the several references in which the data utilised above 
are to be found : — 

(1) Binet, A., and Simon, Th., The Development of Intelligence in Children. 
(Transl. by E. S. Kite, from L'Annee Psych., 1905, pp. 245-336.) Pp. 93-139 
with relevant tables. (The age-assignments are often neither precise nor 
explicit ; and in consequence my interpretation of them differs from the 
convenient tabulation given by Saffiotti, loc. cit. inf., Tabella I., pp. 62 etseq. ; 
cf. Tabella XVIII. , pp. 118 et seq.) 

(2) Id., ibid, (from L'Annee Psych., 1908, pp. 1-90). Table on pp. 238-9. 
(" Right and Left " is omitted by oversight.) 

(3) Binet, A., Les Idees Modernes sur les Enfants, 1909, p. 126. (Some 
of the assignments are so curious as to suggest printer's errors.) 

(4) Binet, A., loc. cit. sup. sub (1) ; (from L'Annee Psych., 1911, 
pp. 145-201). Table, p. 276. 

(5) Id., ibid. Table II., p. 279. (Taken with a 75 per cent, criterion, 
following previous compilers. Data obtained by Levistre and Morle.) 

(6) Decroly, O., and Degand, J., Archives de Psych., 1910, pp. 81-108. 

(7) Goddard, H. PL, The Binet- Simon Measuring Scale : Revised 
Edition, 1911. Table on pp. 10-11. (The compiler states that the arrange- 
ment "embodies our own experience, while following Binet's order as 
closely as we can." Goddard's tables of actual figures — see Ped. Sem., 
1911, pp. 232 et seq.— would give, with a 75 per cent, criterion, larger and 
more numerous divergences.) 

(8) Wallin, J. E. W., Experimental Studies of Mental Defectives. Table 
VIII., p. 49 ; cf. also pp. 43-44 et seq. 

(9) Bobertag, O., " Uber Intelligenzprufungen nach der Methode von 
Binet und Simon." Z. f. angew. Psych., V., 1911 ; VI., 1912. Table on 
p. 523 ; supplemented by Tables on pp. 441 and 472 ibidem, ap. Chotzen, loc. 
cit. inf. (The tables do not quite tally, e.g., as regards assignment of Defini- 
tion (Class), Picture (description), 5 Weights, Reading.) 



XXXII — continued. 



215 



"3 
,a 

3 
CO 


<3 
a . 

£2 

11 


a 
o 
<v . 

<3 "53 
Offl 


s 

3 


be 
S 
O 

co 


a 

3 

P 


J8 
a 
t-i 

M bo 
o O 


3 


IS 




o 

m 


o 
1 


cow 


(£ 


1911 


1912 


1912 


1913 


1913 


1913 


1914 


1914 


1914 


1916 


1916 


1917 


1917 


1919 


- 


XII 
XV 

XII 
XIII 

XII 
XIV? 

Ad. 

Ad. 
Ad. 


XIII-XIV 


XII 
XI 

XI 

XII 
XII 

Xlla 
XI 

XV 
XV 

XV 

XV 
r 


XI 
XII 

h 
h 

h 
XII 


- 


XIV 

Ad. 

xn 

XIV 

Ad. 
Ad. 

Ad. 
Ad. 
Ad. 


XV 


- 


XIV 

XII 
XTTT 

X 
XIV 

Ad. 
XIII 


XIV 

XII 


XII 
XII 
XII 

XII 
XIV 

(XV?) 
(XV?) 

(Ad. ?) 
(Ad. ?) 
(Ad. ?) 

(Ad. ?) 

(Ad. ?) 


IXa 
XII 
XII 

XIV 

Xlla 

(Sup. Ad.) 
Ad. 

(Sup. Ad.) 
XIV 


XII 
XII 
XII 

XIII 
XIII 

XIV 

XIV 

XV 
XV 
XV 

XVI 
XVI 



(10) Chotzen, F., "Die Intelligenzprufungsmethode von Binet-Simon 
bei Schwachsinnige Kinclern." Z. f. Angew. Psych. VI., 1912. Table on 
p. 441. 

(11) Johnston, K. L., "M. Binet's method for the Measurement of 
Intelligence : Some Results." Journ. Exp. Ped., I., 1, 1911, pp. 25 et seq. 
(Assignments inferred from figures given for tests mentioned as ill placed. 
Where no data are recorded we are presumably to infer that the writer agrees 
with the 1908 age-assignments, although I have not ventured in such cases 
to insert those assignments on this slender assumption.) 

(12) Shrubsall, F. C, "The Examination of Mentally Defective Children." 
School Hygiene, 1911, pp. 613 et seq. This investigation, one of the earliest 
undertaken in this country, is especially suggestive for those examining 
special school cases, and is by no means as well known as it should be. 

(13) Terman, L. M., and Childs, S. M., "A Tentative Revision and 
Extension of the Binet-Simon Scale." J. Educ. Psych., III., 1912. Table 
on pp. 277-8. (Meumann and Samotti have followed J. C. Bell, loc. tit. inf., 
who, writing at an earlier date, was forced to deduce the age-assignments 
from the earlier table of figures published on pp. 72-3 of the same Journal.) 

(14) Bell, J. Carleton, "Recent Literature on the Binet-Simon Tests." 
J. Educ. Psych. ,111., 1912, p. 107. (Recommendations deduced from previous 
investigators' assignments. Where no ages are mentioned the writer would 
apparently agree with Binet's 1911 arrangement ; as, however, he has no 
new data, I have not ventured to add his authority for the old assignments. 
There has been some confusion about this compilation. It is attributed 
sometimes to C. J. Bell and C. Hood (Meumann and Samotti) and some- 
times to Catherine Bell (Samotti). Students who refer to Saffiotti's Tabella 
XVIII. should observe that in the erratum on p. 278 he withdraws his use 
of these assignments.) 



(15) Kuhlmann, F. "A Revision of the Binet-Simon System." 
Psycho- Asthen., Mon. Suppl., 1912. 



J, 



216 

(16) Strong, A. C. "Three Hundred and Fifty Children measured by 
the Binet-Simon Scale." Ped. Sem., XX. 4., 1913, pp. 485 et seq. Table 
IX, pp. 509-10. 

(17) Dumville, B. "A Trial of Binet's Tests on Five- Year-Olds." 
J. Exp. Ped., II., 2, 1913. (Assignments in third table on p. 116, supple- 
mented from first and second tables ibid.) 

(18) Mclntyre, J. L., and Rogers, A. L. "The Measurement of In- 
telligence in Children by the Binet-Simon Scale." Brit. J. Psych., VII., 3, 
1914. (Table VII., p. 284.) 

(19) Eltes, Matyas. " A Binet-Simon-fele intelligencia-vizsgalat ered- 
menye magyar gyermekeken." A Oyermek, VIII., 1914, pp. 257 et seq. 

(20) Winch, W. H. "Binet's Mental Tests." Child Study, VI., 7, 
1913, and following numbers. 

(21) Taylor, KT. G. R. " Further Data towards the Study of the Binet- 
Simon Scale." J. Exp. Ped., III., 4, 1916. Table A, p. 265. 

(22) Saffiotti, F. V. La Misura dell' Intelligenza nei Fanciulli. Tabella 
XVIIL, pp. 118-123. 

(23) Moore, R. C. "Age-Scale Methods of Measuring Intelligence." 
J. Exp. Ped., V., 2, 1919. Table XII., p. 97. (Supplemented by data in 
previous article, ibid., IV., 1917, pp. 114 et seq.) 

(24) Terman, L. M. The Stanford Revision and Extension of the Binet- 
Simon Scale, 1917. 

(25) Burt, C, hoc op. Table III., p. 132-3. 

Of the earlier collations cited in the text that of Carleton Bell is to be 
found loc. cit. sup. (14), Table, pp. 104-5. It reviews only the half-dozen 
investigations then available. Meumann (Vorlesungen zur Einfuhrung in 
die Experimentelle Pddagogih. 2te Aufl., 1913. Pp. 273-5), practically 
repeats Carleton Bell. Saffiotti {loc. cit. sup. (22). Tabella XVIIL) repeats 
Meumann with the addition of about half a dozen more recent studies. 
Owing to the ease with which misprints and misunderstandings creep into 
such tables, I have endeavoured, as far as possible, to go for my own com- 
pilation to original sources ; but have found the other collections — par- 
ticularly Saffiotti's — of great assistance in checking or supplementing my 
own deductions from earlier work. 



APPENDIX II. 



ON THE CALCULATION OF COEFFICIENTS OF ASSOCIATION. 

The conception designated in the text by the name association, and the 
formulae for expressing the degree of such association in quantitative terms, 
may best be understood by reference to a table on the following plan. We 
wish to determine the degree of interdependence, let us say, between de- 
ficiency, on the one hand, and delinquency (or sex, social status, success 
at a given test), on the other hand. In such a case we have two main lines 
of classification, each line dividing the total population into two classes — 
a negative and a positive, each line crossing the other, and so yielding 
four sub-classes. Thus : — 

TABLE XXXIII. 



Fourfold Table to illustrate the Conception of Association. 







Fibst Classification 
{e.g., according to Morality). 






Positive 
{e.g., Delinquent). 


Negative 
{e.g., Non-Delinquent). 




2 § 
% .1 

h « 


> '43 

M O 

EH £ 

M fl) 
2 Pi 

Ah cj 


Positive-positive 
{e.g., Defective- 
delinquents) 


Positive -negative 
{e.g., Defective-non- 
delinquents). 

N P 


P = P p + N p 


i 3 

o 1 

Q 1 
o 1 

SI <a 
02 ~ 


Negative 

(e.g. Non- 
Defective). 


Negative -positive 

{e.g., Non-defective 

delinquents) 

P n 


Negative -negative 

{e.g., Non-defective 

non-delinquents) 


n = P n + N n 


Totals 


P = P p + P n 


N = N p + N n 

1 


P+N=p+n= 

p _i_p 4-N +N 
p~ n p ' n 



The formula used in the foregoing memorandum for calculating the 
degree of association is as follows : — 
Coefficient of colligation (a>) 



1 



1 + 



N p 


Pn 


P P 


N n 


J 


N P 


Pn 



P„ N„ 



217 



218 

where P p = the number from the positive subdivision of the second classifi- 
cation (p, e.g., defectives) that is found in the positive subdivision of the first 
classification (P, e.g., delinquents) and P n = the remainder of the latter {e.g., 
non-defective delinquents) ; N p = the number from the positive subdivision 
of the second classification (p, e.g., defectives, as before) that is found in the 
negative subdivision of the first classification (N, e.g., non-delinquents) and N n 
^ the remainder of the latter {e.g., non-defective non-delinquents). The 
probable error of this formula is as follows : — 



1— o> 2 / l 1 1 i 

p.e. = 0-6745 — — . / -+-l+-i.i 

It is convenient to express the subdivisions of the two main classes as 
percentages, thus putting P and 1ST both = 100 : 5-6 per cent., for example, 
of the delinquents and 1-5 per cent, of the non-delinquents, are defective. 
P„ then = 100 - P p ; and N„ = 100 — N p . The coefficient can thus be 
obtained at once from two proportions or percentages only ; in the above 
instance it is consequently unnecessary to discover what percentage of the 
defective and non-defective population are delinquent. 1 Accordingly, I have 
constructed a graph which enables the investigator to read off at a glance 
the approximate value of the association coefficient directly two such per- 
centages are obtained (Figure 27). 

In educational enquiries there are numerous problems that require the 
determination of some such measure of association. In the foregoing memor- 
andum many instances have already been encountered, notably in estimating 
the value of individual tests for mental deficiency. Other occasions arise 
where it is required to estimate the influence upon educational progress of 
new methods of teaching or special conditions of school work, e.g., open-air 
classes, free discipline, etc. In ah such cases it should be observed that at 
least two proportions are essential. Too often teachers, for example, are 
content simply to record a marked progress in the group selected for the 
experiment without reference to progress under normal conditions. Plainly 
(to revert to the instance employed above), however ]arge be the number of 
defectives among the delinquents, this can yield no indication of any asso- 
ciation between the two conditions until we know the number of defectives 
among the non-delinquent population. A control-group is indispensable. 

The reader should realise that there are other ways of determining 
associations from data in the above form. In Yule's Introduction to Statistics 
a simpler coefficient Q is suggested, the formula for which is identical with 
the above except for the omission of the signs for square-root. I have calcu- 
lated many coefficients for tests and other mental functions by both formulae, 
and in most cases found w to be more satisfactory. Q is much larger than w, 
e.g., for a> = -5, Q = -8. With Q the differentiation among the higher values 
will thus be disproportionately small. To those more familiar with 
such coefficients of correlation as r, Q yields results that are confusingly 
high, o), on the other hand, possesses this advantage. It is mathematically 
equivalent to the product-sum correlation, r, for the corresponding sym- 
metrical fourfold table, 2 i.e., for the case where each of the four main classes, 

i 1 ) Working from the other two percentages might even give widely different coefficients. It should be 
noted that a coefficient of unity might mean either that all delinquents are defective (which would be nearly 
true of deflciency in educational attainments) or that all defectives are delinquent (which is grossly untrue of 
defectives either in general intelligence or in educational attainments), or in both. 

( 2 ) Calculated, however, it should be added, as if the distributions were not normal but rectilinear, that 
is, as a correlation of ranks where the ranking runs to no more than two places, and without any correction 
whatever for treating what may in fact be continuous variables, distributed more or less normally, as though 
they involved the mere addition of discrete units. 






Figure 27 

ABAC TO DETERMINE FROM TWO GIVEN PERCENTAGES THE 
CORRESPONDING COEFFICIENT OF ASSOCIATION. 



219 



100 



P n expressed as a percentage of P. 

30 40 50 60 



70 



SO 




Example. — A puzzle test is passed by 71 per cent, of normals and only 27 per 
cent, of defectives, a difference of 44 per cent. A maze test is passed by 98 per 
cent, of normals and 60 per cent, of defectives, a difference of 38 per cent. 

In which test is failure more closely associated with deficiency ? 

71 per cent, is found on the left-hand vertical. An imaginary horizontal is 
carried from this point towards the right to meet an imaginaiy vertical dropped 
from the point corresponding to 27 per cent, on the top horizontal. 

The two imaginary lines intersect between the curves for -40 and *45, but much 
nearer the latter. 

The association coefficient is, therefore, approximately *44. 

Similarly coordinates for 98 and 60 per cent, intersect on the curve for *70. 

Contrary, therefore, to the suggestion that might be drawn from the crude 
percentage -difference, failure in the maze test is far more closely associated with 
deficiency. The puzzle test is comparatively worthless. 



220 

whether positive or negative, contains the same number of individuals, 
namely, half of the grand total, and thus P = N = p = n, and where, 
accordingly, P p = 100 - N p = N nf and P„ = 100 - P p = N p . 

Professor Karl Pearson has criticised Mr. Udny Yule's original co- 
efficient, Q ; and stated that "On the whole, r t seems to me the most satis- 
factory coefficient of association." The determination of r t , however, 
involves an elaborate calculation, as may be seen from its formula, 

^ ) ^=ToT , o+T 1 T / l r + T 2 T' 2 r 2 +. . . +T// + .. . 

N n 

where t and r' are functions of — — — and — — — , the more usual of which 

P+N P+N 

can be read off from published tables of the " tetrachoric functions." 



Sin ( — w j might be used as a rough approximation to r . Indeed, in 

the symmetrical fourfold table that is formed from a " normal " corre- 
lation by taking the points of division between P and N, p and n at the 
medians, the correlation can be shown mathematically to be 



r = Sin I — co 

\ 2 . 

Thus to (Yule's " colligation " coefficient) and r t are related somewhat as R 
(Spearman's " footrule " coefficient) and r. The tables for converting 
r into It, published in Whipple's Manual of Mental Tests (p. 44) and 
Thorndike's Mental Measurements (p. 226), can be used for obtaining r t 
approximately from w, provided the points of division are not far from the 
medians. 

Since the distribution of intelligence is approximately normal, it might 

be thought at first sight more advisable to use r t , or Sin ( — w J as an approxi- 
mation to r,. But where the points of division lie far from the medians, as 
in some of the cases discussed above, these coefficients give values that 
may be illusively high. For corroboration, instead of dividing the children 
into two groups, first, according to imputed deficiency or non-deficiency 
and then according to failure or success in the test of ability, we can mark 
or rank them individually for imputed ability and tested ability respectively. 
In the cases thus verified the correlations then obtained in the ordinary way 



as a rule he between gj and r t or Sin ( — w J, sometimes below the former, and 
usually nearer the former than the latter. 1 



t 1 ) A critical discussion of this and other coefficients suggested for measuring association will be found 
in Journalof Royal Statistical Society, Vol. LXXV., 1912 (G. Udny Yule, " On the Methods of Measuring the 
Association between Two Attributes"). The coefficient of colligation is there described. As, however, in 
Mr. Yule's Introduction to Statistics the coefficient is but briefly referred to, and the formula not given, it 
has seemed advisable to explain it at some length above. 

Criticisms of the various association-coefficients will be found in Biometrika, Vol. IX., 1913, Nos. 1 and 
2 (K.. Pearson and D. Heron, " On Theories of Association "). 

To avoid misconception I may add that I use the colligation coefficient w only as a rough measure for 
rough experimental tests. To determine the precise relation between general intelligence and the mental 
functions tested, we should, I believe, first cast our tests into an " internally graded " form. As indicated in 
the text, this could be done in detail for most of the problems in the Binet-Simon scale. The product moment 
coefficient could then be directly computed. Where " internal grading " is out of the question, or alters 
the issue, then for final conclusions tetrachoric r should be calculated at length and other suitable 
formulae used as controls. Such technical elaborations, however, would clearly be inappropriate to the 
present data or to the present work. 



APPENDIX III. 

SUPPLEMENTARY TESTS OF INTELLIGENCE. 
A. WRITTEN AND GROUP TESTS. 

In this and the following appendices I have added sample test-sheets 
and material for the more effective and better known tests of intelligence 
which may be used as supplementary to, or in place of, the Binet-Simon 
scale. Those contained in the present appendix are drawn up for use as 
written, group tests. The test material may be duplicated by a copying 
press ; the copies will be distributed to the class ; and, after due explanation 
and illustration of the test by means of blackboard examples, the entire 
group will thus be able to work through the exercises simultaneously in 
writing. With young children, by whom the art of expressing ideas in 
writing is but recently acquired, such a procedure will not yield the most 
successful results. Hence, collective tests are best reserved for the pre- 
liminary testing of older and brighter children 1 ; with children under the age 
of ten and below the level of Standard IV. the results will correlate less highly 
with intelligence. The easier tests, such as the opposites and completion 
(story) tests, give results tolerably satisfactory about this level ; the harder 
tests, such as the synonyms, definitions, and completion (argument) tests, 
will be found appropriate only for pupils in the top standards. 

The most convenient method of measuring performances with such 
tests is to assign one mark for each correct answer, and fractions — one- 
quarter, one-half, and three-quarters — for answers that are partially correct. 
What answers are to be accepted as completely correct and what answers 
are to be credited with the various degrees of incomplete correctness — these 
are problems that must be left to the individual examiner's discretion. For 
greater precision, I myself employ a detailed key containing all the likely 
alternatives, all the answers, in fact, actually given by children I have 
tested ; and am thus able to award always the same mark for the same word. 
Such keys are too lengthy to be published here ; and too elaborate for the 
occasional needs of the busy teacher. 

Subjective evaluation could be reduced to a minimum by the following 
modifications. Instead of leaving a blank to be filled in by the child, the 
test-sheet may present for each question three or four alternative answers, 
and the child is required to indicate by underlining which he considers 
correct, or by erasure which he considers incorrect. The use of a stencil or 
partly transparent sheet, to be laid upon the test papers so as to show through 
only the correct words, will render the marking perfectly automatic. Un- 
fortunately, this procedure eliminates the element of spontaneous invention 
and creative thought ; and thus, while increasing the mechanical precision, 
decreases the intrinsic value, of the test so used. 

Owing to the inevitable variations in the marking of different teachers 
who may use the tests in their present simple form, and in view of the limited 

t 1 ) For purposes of junior county scholarship examinations a special committee at Bradford, working 
largely with earlier forms of my present test-sheets, concluded that the most effective tests would be Opposites, 
Analogies, Completion (discontinuous), and Graded Reasoning (written). These were, accordingly, employed. 
See, for an interesting account of one among several such experiments, the Annual Report of the Bradford 
Education Committee, 1920. Several other education authorities are now preparing to experiment upon 
similar lines with group tests of intelligence in their scholarship examinations. 

221 



222 

range of years over which the tests are applicable, complete tables of age- 
norms would be unnecessary or even misleading. In Table XXXV (p. 238), 
therefore, I give only rough averages calculated regardless of sex. And for 
a like reason I have not thought it worth the necessary time and space to 
elaborate and print a set of standardised instructions as to procedure or 
marking. Teachers, indeed, will probably prefer, not to adopt the materials 
and instructions as here printed, but to modify them to suit the needs of their 
own particular pupils ; and then compile each his own set of typical results. 
As the tests can be carried out upon large numbers simultaneously, those who 
use them will have no difficulty in rapidly obtaining for their own schools 
data for age-averages, standard deviations, and borderline performances. 
The materials for the majority of the tests are identical with those used 



TABLE XXXIV 

Norms for Supplementary Tests of Intelligence 

The units for the first seven tests are the number of words correctly written 
or the number of questions correctly answered ; for the absurdities, 
the number of absurdities discovered ; for the mazes, the mental year. 





Opposites 


Analogies 


Synonyms 


Definitions 


Instruc- 
tions 


Completion 
(Story) 


Completion 
(Argument) 


Absurdities 


Maze 


6— 












7-3 


7— 


















8-5 


8— 


10-2 


[3-8] 


[4-8] 


— 


[5-8] 


[12-2] 


[2-8] 


[8-8] 


9-1 


ci- 


18-5 


6-1 


[8-3] 


[2-6] 


101 


18-8 


[5-2] 


[10-2] 


9-8 


lO— 


29-4 


8-3 


14-6 


[5-9] 


14-9 


29-7 


[9-3] 


11-2 


10-6 


11— 


35-8 


16-8 


21-2 


81 


18-3 


32-6 


11-1 


13-4 


11-5 


12— 


39-3 


19-2 


261 


130 


20-4 


34-8 


14-6 


16-6 


12-3 


13— 


42-6 


21 


32-2 


19-7 


22-3 


36-4 


19-3 


18-7 


13-2 


14— 


45-2 


22-5 


35-4 


25-3 


23-8 


37-9 


22-6 


20-6 


13-8 



in my previous investigations. A fuller account of the results to be expected 
and the ground upon which the tests have been chosen will be found in 
earlier publications dealing with those researches. 1 

It will be noted that all the tests in the present category are linguistic 
in form ; all are, therefore, characterised by the limitations and disadvantages 
which stamp all linguistic tests. Accordingly, estimates based upon them 
should be supplemented and checked by measurements obtained with tests 
which — like the maze tests of Appendix IV (3) are of a more concrete and 
practical type. 

For this purpose, however, and for the purpose of testing younger 
children who cannot read, most of the present tests may, with a little in- 
genuity, be cast into pictorial form. For example, in the analogies test, 
instead of the words " glove," " hand," " hat," pictures of these objects may 
be shown ; and instead of writing the answer " head," the child may be re- 
quired, not perhaps to draw a " head," but to indicate out of several alterna- 
tive drawings — of a head, a foot, a boot, and a bonnet — which is the correct 
one. Or, again, instead of pictures, coloured geometrical forms of various 
sizes may be used, either drawn and painted, or cut out in card, and the 
child will with this material work through such relations as would be indicated 
by the words : "The large square is to the small square as the large circle 

is to ? " Or, " The red, erect triangle is to the green, inverted 

triangle as the red, erect pentagon is to ? " Similarly, for the 

i}) See Joum. Exp. Fed., Vol. I., No. 2, Nov., 1911, " Experimental Tests of Higher Mental Processes 
and their Relation to Intelligence." A valuable discussion of some of the tests (opposites, analogies, com- 
pletion) will be found in Whipple's Manual of Mental and Physical Tests. 



223 

opposites test, instead of writing down " black " as the opposite to " white," 
the child will select a black card from an assortment of various colours, and 
pair it with the white card. Instead of denning names he will define the 
use of actual objects shown. Instead of writing words of a similar meaning, 
he will pair together, from an assortment of cards, pictures of objects having a 
similar purpose — such as a knife and a fork, ink and a pen, a cart and a horse, 
a railway carriage and a locomotive. Instead of completing a printed story 
he will complete a dissected picture ; or place a series of pictures (cut, for 
example, from the Busch Bilderbogen) in the right order, to tell a story. 
Instead of pointing out the absurdities in a printed story he will point out 
absurdities in a picture or series of pictures — a chair with three legs, a horse 
pushing a cart, a see-saw impossibly balanced. In every case the pictorial 
material should be so selected as to call forth the power of reasoning. Success 
in the ordinary jig-saw puzzle, for example, depends chiefly on luck, ingenuity, 
and perseverance, in matching experimentally a number of shapes and 
colours ; but by cutting out in their entirety particular objects represented 
in the picture — the windows from the station, the engine that draws the 
train, the wheels from the carriages, the smoke from the funnel — a pictorial 
completion test can be devised that depends upon the perception of sig- 
nificant relations — the very essence of reasoning — rather than upon the 
lowlier processes of trial and error. 



1. OPPOSITES. 

The instructions for this test are : " Against every word write another 
which means the opposite of the printed word." The stimulus-words here 
given, a hundred in all, have been carefully chosen, standardised, and arranged. 
The words are moderately easy ; and nearly equal in difficulty. Hence, the 
test is adapted for use as a speed test. The children will be told to start 
and stop at given signals, and to work as quickly as they can. Each opposite 
correctly inserted receives one mark ; fractions are allowed in rare cases for 
an attempt moderately or dubiously successful. 

La obtaining the norms given in Table XXXIV only the first fifty words 
were used, and the time limited to five minutes. This allows the second 
fifty words to be used in a subsequent test, either for reliability, or to test 
improvement after a given interval. With the second fifty the norms obtained 
are about 2 per cent, lower. 

The material for the present test has been carefully selected and 
standardised by means of a special investigation. As an illustration of the 
method used for such a purpose, and as a guide to those who wish to attempt 
the standardisation of other tests for themselves, I append a detailed descrip- 
tion of the procedure and criteria used. 1 

Numerous lists have been drawn up by different investigators for use as oppo- 
sites tests. 2 None of these were found entirely satisfactory. A preliminary set was, 
therefore, compiled, which included all the published lists, and contained in all 
over 300 stimulus words. It was given in the form of shorter series, to approxi- 
mately 400 boys and 400 girls. The following determinations were then made for 
each stimulus-word : (1) the number of omissions, (2) the number of different 
words supplied, (3) the frequency with which each different word occurred. On 
the basis of these calculations our final words were ultimately chosen and arranged. 

(*) In carrying out the enquiry I am especially indebted to the assistance rendered by Mr. Corkhill and 
Mr. Moore, two of my research students in the psychological department of the University of Liverpool. 

( 2 ) The most important of the earlier investigations, together with samples of their test-materials, are 
given in Whipple's Manual of Mental and Physical Tests, Vol. II., pp. 79-89. 



224 

The following criteria were employed in compiling the standard lists : — 

1. At least fifty, preferably one hundred, words of approximately equal 
difficulty are required when used for written tests with a fixed time-limit. Short 
lists, containing twenty only, as those of Wells and Woodworth, do not differentiate 
sufficiently between the children tested. 

2. The average level of difficulty sought must, therefore, not be too low. It 
would be impossible to devise longer lists so uniformly easy as those of Wells and 
Woodworth. 

3. The upper limits of difficulty must not be too high. Unfamiliar words like 
" loquacious," " obnoxious " (Thorndike's list) must be discarded ; and, in general, 
words which produce a high proportion of omissions must be eliminated : e.g., " pull " 
suggested no opposite, correct or incorrect, to 25 per cent, of the children, "help " 
suggested none to 23 per cent., " please " none to 32 per cent., " approach " none 
to 53 per cent., " virtue " none to 86 per cent. 

4. That word is preferable which elicits the same response from different 
children with the highest frequency, e.g., "soft," "north," "dirty" — the only 
words suggesting the same response to over 99 per cent, of the children 
answering. 

5. That word is preferable which elicits from different children the smallest 
number of different responses. Simple words like " joy," " glad," " give," " little," 
possess an enormous variety of alternative opposites. Of all the stimulus -words used, 
" funny " gave the largest variety of replies — ■" serious," " sad," " stern," " solemn," 
" gloomy," " glum," " dismal," " miserable," " dull," " grave," " sober," " staid," 
" quiet," " sedate," " proper," " depressing," " stupid," " insipid," " wearisome," 
" tedious," " boring," " tiring," " dry," " sulky," " mournful," " awful," " bad- 
tempered," " grim," " tragic," " instructive "■ — thirty-one in all. In discrete 
reaction tests, a frequent explanation of delay with girls of copious vocabulary 
was : "I could not make up my mind which it was best to say." 

6. Words eliciting only two or three opposites should, however, be discarded, 
if these occur with about equal frequency, e.g., " begin " — " end " (42 per cent.), 
"finish " (40 per cent.) ; " under " - " above " (39 per cent.), " over " (35 per cent.) ; 
" morning "-" night " (38 per cent.), "evening" (33 per cent.), "afternoon" 
(27 per cent.). 

7. Cases involving difficulties of spelling or grammar must be omitted, e.g., 
" profit " — " loss " (27 per cent., — 4 per cent, erased or corrected), "apostle" 
(often incorrectly spelt or respelt, 2 per cent.), " brave " — " coward " (25 per cent.), 
"cowardice" (5 per cent.), "cowardness" (2 per cent.), " clever "-" dunce " 
(10 per cent.). A slight grammatical change often makes a considerable improve- 
ment, e.g., " loss "-" find " (32 per cent.), " lost "-" found " (98 per cent.). 

8. Each word should be capable of only one interpretation, e.g., " left " may be 
understood as the opposite either to " right " (49 per cent.) or to " taken " (21 per 
cent.). " Simple " is understood as the opposite to " hard " or " difficult " (20 per 
cent.), to "complex," "compound," "complicated" (13 per cent.), to "clever," 
" wise " (11 per cent.), to " proud," " haughty," " grand," " great," " rich " (10 per 
cent.), " fussy," "gaudy," "smart," "ornamented" (8 per cent.). 

9. Words eliciting as a frequent opposite merely the same word preceded by 
" not " or a negative prefix or suffix should (with occasional exceptions in the latter 
cases) be discarded, e.g., " guilty "-" not guilty " (girls, 24 per cent. ; boys, 1 per 
cent.), " happy "-" unhappy " (68 per cent., followed by a marked increase in use of 
«' un- " with the ensuing words). 

10. Words possessing both contraries and contradictories should be avoided, 
e.g., " nobody " - " somebody " (65 per cent.), " everybody " (16 per cent.). 

11. Words should be avoided which suggest circumlocutions, neologisms, or 
other time-consuming ingenuities, e.g., "please," "no, thank you" (15 per cent.), 
" I'll make you," and similar phrases (8 per cent.), " approach " - " get away from " 
(6 per cent.), "get far away," " deproach," " inapproach," " disapproach," "re- 
proach " ; " parent " - " transparent " (3 per cent.). 

12. Words where the most frequent reply is not the true opposite should be 
avoided, e.g., " son " - " daughter " (63 per cent.), " father " (12 per cent.). 



225 



e.g. 



13. Words where the replies differ greatly in the two sexes should be avoided, 
" child " :— 



Reply 


"Man." 


"Woman." 
"Ladj-." 


"Adnlt." 


" Father."- 
"Mother." 


"Baby." 


"Parent." 


Omissions. 




Boys . . 


43 


1 


32 








6 


18 


per cent. 


Girls .. 


14 


30 


26 


7 


5 


2 


2 


per cent, 



Similarly, "servant" (boys, "master"; girls, "mistress"), "cheap" (boys, 
" dear " ; girls, " expensive "), " busy " (boys, " lazy " ; girls, " idle "). 

14. Several words suggesting the same opposite should not occur in the same 
list, e.g., " long," " tall," " big " (the last two in immediate succession in the lists of 
Bonser, Simpson) ; "glad," "happy" (kSimpson, Whitley). "Slow" repeatedly 
does duty as opposite to " fast," " quick," " rapid," " sudden," " swift," and even 
to " busy," " active," " clever." 

15. No word should be a possible opposite of another word in the same list, 
e.g., " soft," " rough " (Simpson, Whitley). 

16. Of any pair of opposites, both terms should be tried as a stimulus-word in 
the standardisation experiments, and that word selected which best conforms to 
the foregoing conditions, e.g., "fluid" yields twenty-eight different responses, the 
commonest being "solid" (31 per cent.); "solid," on the other hand, yields only 
nine, "liquid" (72 per cent.) being the most frequent, "hollow" (13 per cent.), 
"gas," or "gassy" (10 per cent.) the commoner alternatives; but even this 
ambiguity is sufficient to cause its rejection, and the entire group is eliminated. 

Judged by these principles, the words in Wells' and Woodworth's standardised 
list are far superior to any other set, except that they are too few and perhaps a 
little too mechanical. In my trials of this test, however, "dead" and "slow" 
furnish too many synonymous replies, coming 108th in order of variety of response. 
" Male " was several times passed over, provoked many meaningless replies, and 
was often taken as a misprint for " mate " (hence, " foe," " enemy," " traitor," 
" unmate," " himself," as opposites). Their criterion, too (quickness of reaction 
time), does not seem entirely satisfactory, e.g., "day" (among their easiest of all) 
gives ten different responses ; " soft " (unstarred) gives only one response. 

According to these criteria, we eventually selected 100 stimulus-words, 
arranged as below : — 

Test 21 \ — Opposites. 



Answer. 



Answer. 



Old 

Poor .... 
Big .... 

Early . . 
Long . . . 
Easy . . 
Inside . . 
Pretty . . 

Boy 

Wet .... 
Kind . . . 

12. Winter.. 

13. Woman 

14. Slow 

15. White . . 

16. Upwards 

17. Loud . . . 

18. Crooked. 

19. Cheap . . 

20. Busv . . . 



1. 

2. 
3. 

4. 

5. 

6. 

7. 

8. 

9. 
10. 
11. 



23. 

24. 
25. 

26. 

27. 
28. 



21. Sunrise . . 

22. Brother . 
Borrow . . 
Clean . . . 
Common . 
Warm . . . 
Tight . . . 
Mountain 

29. Father . . 

30. True 

31. Shut 

32. Female . . 

33. Few 

34. Heavy . . 

35. Multiply . 

36. Absent. . . 

37. Moving . . 

38. Question . 

39. Now 

40. 'Polite 



(*) Tests 1 to 20 are scholastic ; see Appendix I., pp. 339 et acq. 



226 



Answer. 

41. East 71. 

42. Enemy 72. 

43. Nobody 73. 

44. Glad 74. 

45. Top 75. 

46. Possible 76. 

47. Come 77. 

48. Front 78. 

49. Day 79. 

50. Tame 80. 

51. Less 81. 

52. Great 82. 

53. Love 83. 

54. Sell 84. 

55. Low 85. 

56. Blunt 86. 

57. Yes 87. 

58. Win 88. 

59. There 89. 

60. First 90. 

61. Noisy 91. 

62. Best 92. 

63. Strong 93. 

64. Asleep 94. 

65. Land 95. 

66. Thin 96. 

67. Me . . 97. 

68. Dislike 98. 

69. Backwards 99. 

70. Wrong.. 100. 



Answer. 

Near 

Lowland 

Within 

Smooth 

North 

Forget 

Large 

Over 

Narrow 

Sober 

Tender 

Lost 

Obey 

Soft 

Nice 

Careless 

Town 

Complete 

Left 

Happy 

Laugh 

Well 

Stand 

Evening 

End 

Little 

Slanting 

Dark 

Stale 

After 



2. ANALOGIES. 

I have taken the title for this test from an Aristotelian term which 
means "proportion." 1 The exercise is, in fact, "rule of three " in words 
instead of in numbers. The essential instructions are : "In the blank space 
provided for the answer, fill in a fourth word standing in the same connection 
with the third word as the second word does with the first." The task, 
however, should be explained and illustrated with not more than three 
simple examples, worked upon the blackboard, before the papers are 
attempted. As with the opposites test, the list is best divided into two 
series ; and each carried out as a speed test. Table XXXIV. gives results 
obtained in five minutes. 

Test 22.— Analogies. . 

Answer. 

1. Prince is to Princess as King is to ? 

2. Pencil is to Drawing as Brush is to ? 

3. January is to February as First is to ? 

4. Sailor is to Soldier as Navy is to ? 

5. Moon is to Earth as Earth is to ? 

6. This is to Here as That is to ? 

7. Day is to Midday as Night is to ? 

(') A test of this form was first used to measure intelligence by Mr. Moore and myself at Liverpool. It 
has since been widely employed for this purpose ; and has been inserted into one or two revisions of the 
Binet-Simon scale. 



227 

Answer. 

8. Little is to Big as Dwarf is to ? 

9. Foot is to Leg as Hand is to ? 

10. Neighing is to Braying as Horse is to ? 

11. Heat is to Cold as Summer is to ? 

12. I is to Mine as You is to ? 

13. Table is to Wood as Window is to ? 

14. Dining-room is to Bedroom as Eating is to ? 

15. Coffee-grounds are to Coffee-pot as Tea-leaves are to ? 

16. Sheep is to Mutton as Pig is to ? 

17. East is to West as Day is to ? 

18. Penny is to Copper as Nail is to ? 

19. Hour is to Minute as Minute is to ? 

20. Bicycle is to Tricycle as Two Wheels is to ? 

21. Straw is to Hat as Leather is to ? 

22. White is to Snow as Black is to ? 

23. Cloud is to Rain as Sun is to ? 

24. Spider is to Fly as Cat is to ? 

25. Uncle is to Aunt as Brother is to ? 

26. Liquid is to Solid as Water is to ? 

27. Little is to Less as Much is to ? 

28. Grandfather is to Husband as Grandmother is to ? 

29. Tuesday is to Wednesday as Wednesday is to ? 

30. Evening is to Morning as Supper is to ? 

31. Wash is to Face as Sweep is to ? 

32. Tailor is to Baker as Clothes is to ? 

33. Pale Yellow is to Deep Yellow as Pink is to . . ? 

34. At Home is to Abroad as England is to ? 

35. Fire is to Hot as Ice is to ? 

36. Cork is to Water as Balloon is to ? 

37. Robin is to Swallow as Winter is to ? 

38. Man is to Woman as Boy is to ? 

39. Steamer is to Pier as Train is to ? 

40. Sky is to Blue as Grass is to ? 

41. Once is to One as Twice is to ? 

42. Cat is to Fur as Bird is to • ? 

43. Library is to Books as Greenhouse is to ? 

44. Gulf is to Sea as Cape is to ? 

45. Houses are to Bricks as Cathedrals are to ? 

46. Three is to One as Yard is to ? 

47. Oyster is to Shell as Banana is to ? 

48. Good is to Bad as Long is to ? 

49. Eat is to Bread as Drink is to ? 

50. James is to Jimmie as William is to ? 

51. Seeing is to Eye as Hearing is to ? 

52. Fruit is to Orange as Vegetable is to ? 

53. Lily is to Flower as Oak is to ? 

54. Trunk is to Elephant as Hand is to ? 

55. Sit is to Chair as Sleep is to ? 

56. Half-sovereign is to Gold as Bullet is to ? 

57. Cradle is to Baby as Stable is to ? 

58. England is to London as France is to ? 

59. Small is to Large as Mouse is to ? 

60. Eat is to Fat as Starve is to ? 

61. Chew is to Teeth as Smell is to ? 

62. First is to Last as Beginning is to ? 



228 

Answer. 

63. Sweets are to Sugar as Cakes are to ? 

64. Church Bell is to Church Service as School Bell is to ? 

65. Float is to Sink as Cork is to ? 

66. Farmer is to Gardener as Farm is to ? 

67. Kitten is to Cat as Lamb is to ? 

68. Honey is to Milk as Bee is to ? 

69. White is to Good as Black is to ? 

70. Knitting is to Girls as Woodwork is to ? 

71. Legs are to Horse as Wheels are to ? 

72. Nasty is to Nice as Medicine is to ? 

73. Mewing is to Cat as Barking is to ? 

74. Blood is to Flesh as Gravy is to ? 

75. Pen is to Write as Knife is to ? 

76. July is to June as February is to ? 

77. Pigtail is to Chinamen as Curly Hair is to ? 

78. Purse is to Money as Grate is to ? 

79. Skirt is to Girl as Trouser is to . ? 

80. Glove is to Hand as Boot is to ? 

81. Tears are to Sorrow as Laughter is to ? 

82. Japanese is to Japan as Turk is to ? 

83. Healthy Cheeks are to Red Roses as Clean Teeth are to ? 

84. Mowing is to Hay as Reaping is to ? 

85. Lion is to Animals as Rose is to ? 

86. Infantry is to Cavalry as Walking is to ? 

87. Cabbage is to Kitchen Garden as Tulip is to ? 

88. Silver is to Spoon as China is to ? 

89. Skating is to Winter as Bathing is to ? 

90. Breakfast is to Dinner as Dinner is to ? 

91. Cornfield is to Corn as Orchard is to ? 

92. Dawn is to Morning as Twilight is to ? 

93. Possessions are to Wishes as A Bird in the Hand is to ? 

94. Button is to Glove as Lace is to ? 

95. Tallow is to Candles as Oil is to ? 

96. Nose is to Face as Toe is to ? 

97. Cold is to Hot as North Pole is to ? 

98. Flying is to Birds as Swimming is to ? 

99. River is to Sea as Fresh Water is to ? 

100. King is to Emperor as Kingdom is to ? 

3. SYNONYMS. 

A synonym test is a natural complement to a test of opposites or 
antonyms ; and the two have been used in conjunction in the American 
Army tests. 

For the following test the instructions are simply as follows : — 

"Against each word write another word which expresses, as nearly as 
possible, the same meaning." A time limit may be imposed, if desired. 
The words employed in this test were selected in accordance with definite 
principles from Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases ; and 
reference to the classified lists of synonyms there published will greatly 
facilitate the marking. 

Of all forms of " controlled association," this test perhaps approximates 
most closely to the familiar test of "free " or "uncontrolled association." 
The replies may, therefore, be classified upon lines analogous to those in use 
for the latter ; and will then be found to throw much light on specific 



229 

capacities and perhaps still more on temperamental tendencies. Of these 
the following deserve special notice : namely, a disposition to choose collo- 
quial, pedantic, or obvious words ; short, simple, Anglo-Saxon words, or 
long, intellectualistic, romance words (Latinisms) ; words objectively 
accurate, or words emotionally vivid ; words in familiar use, and therefore 
frequently selected by others, or peculiar, "individual" and "egocentric" 
words, rarely selected by others ; and, again, rigid adherence to the same 
part of speech as that suggested by the stimulus-word, or careless divergence ; 
wide or narrow vocabulary ; and consistent variations in these respects for 
stimulus-words of special types — e.g., for common and rare words, for rela- 
tively abstract and relatively concrete words, for psychological and non- 
psychological words, words of censure and praise, and so forth. Special 
interests will be largely deducible from the significance attached to the 
more general or ambiguous words ; but for this purpose the test should 
include a freer admixture of relatively concrete words, such as those in the 
following test, which, indeed, may also be used as a synonym test. 1 



Test 23. — Synonyms. 



Answer. 



Answer. 



1. 

2. 

3. 

4. 

5. 

6. 

7. 

8. 

9. 
10. 
11. 
12. 
13. 
14. 
15. 
16. 
17. 
18. 
19. 
20. 
21. 
22. 
23. 
24. 
25. 



Active 

Affectionate 

Anger 

Assert 

Attend 

Bad 

Beautiful . . . 

Begin 

Cause 

Change 

Clever 

Cloth 

Collection . . 

Curious 

Deceive 

Decide 

Destroy 
Difficulty . . 

Fasten 

Free 

Funny 

Great 

Hidden 
Honest . . . 
Important . 



26. Inquire . . . 

27. Insane 

28. Knowledge 

29. Nasty 

30. Obstinate . 

31. Obvious . . 

32. Pleasure . . 

33. Poor 

34. Proud 

35. Real 

36. Reject 

37. Sign 

38. Slow 

39. Spoiled . . . 

40. Succeed . . . 

41. Superior . . 

42. Tempt 

43. Timid 

44. Trouble . . . 

45. Untruth . . 

46. Useful 

47. Vulgar 

48. Weak 

49. Wish 

50. Work 



4. DEFINITIONS. 

The following test correlates highly with intelligence among older and 
brighter school children. It was framed as a test of " general knowledge " ; 
and in vocational examinations has been found to throw considerable light 
upon the range of information and direction of interests among young 

(') I have given a preliminary account of the possibilities of this and the following test in Child Study, 1915. 
Vol. VIII., No. 1, p. 11. In revising the above I have been particularly indebted both to Miss May Smith and 
to Mr. E. K. Mason-Thompson, who have had a wide experience in applying such tests to adults of various 
ages and of different levels of culture. 



230 



adults. Two words have been chosen from each of twenty-five of the com- 
monest branches of knowledge. The words of a pair are printed below on 
the same line. In assessing the results, however, many of these doublets 
may again be classed together into a smaller number of overlapping groups — 
scientific, artistic, linguistic, literary, recreational, commercial, domestic, 
etc. 

In administering the test, the words should be hectographed in a single 
column, not in pairs as below, with at least one clear line between each 
word. The instructions are : " Write against the following words, as briefly 
and accurately as you can, what you think to be the meaning of each." 
A time limit may be employed, if desired ; but is not recommended, as it 
decreases the comparability of deductions as to special interests, and handi- 
caps the careful and detailed writer. 



10. 
11. 
12. 
13. 
14. 
15. 
16. 
17. 
18. 
19. 
20. 
21. 
22. 
23. 
24. 
25. 



Test 24. 

Answer. 

Tropical 

Barrister 

Millinery 

Steeplechase 

Balance 

Charter 

Platoon 

Tragedy 

Minim 

Cancer 

Junket 

Ensign 

Molar 

Grease-paint 

Mammal 

Mercury 

Fauteuil 

Frieze 

Magnet 

Octagonal 

Pollen 

Landscape 

Cue 

Planet 

Postmortem 



-Definitions. 

Answer. 

26. Latitude 

27. Trustee 

28. Gusset 

29. Tee 

30. Invoice 

31. Renaissance 

32. Howitzer 

33. Sonnet 

34. Fortissimo 

35. Tuberculosis 

36. Consomme 

37. Tonnage 

38. Cranium 

39. Libretto 

40. Ruminant 

41. Ether 

42. Cinch 

43. Chancel 

44. Barometer 

45. Ratio 

46. Tuber 

47. Fresco 

48. Stalemate 

49. Satellite 

50. Auf Wiedersehen . 



5. GRADED INSTRUCTIONS. 

The various so-called "Instructions" or "Mixed Instructions" tests 
are based on the view that the measurement of a number of different mental 
activities provides a better test of intelligence than the measurement of only 
one mental activity. The questions here used have been roughly graded 
in order of increasing difficulty. Most of the questions indicate a type that 
might well be made the basis of a homogeneous series of questions, were it 
so desired. Since the material is graded and not uniform in difficulty, the 
test is best applied without a time-limit. 1 

t 1 ) A test of this type has been widely used in America ; and from some of the copies there in use a few 
of my questions have been drawn, though all have been regraded. For a similar test in oral form see below, 
pp. 275, 346, et seg. 



231 

Test 25. — Instructions. 

1. Put a dot under this line : 



2. Write a capital letter S in this square 



3. Cross out both A's in the word " ad a." 

4. Write ten (in figures) in the largest square 



5. Make a girl's name by adding one letter to "Mar 

6. If you had your supper to-day, write Y for yes ; if not, write N for 
no 

7. John has four big beads — white, red, green, and blue. He has given 
the green one to Tom ; and the white and blue ones to Jane. Write 
down which he has kept ? 

8. What do I need to light a fire beside matches, coal, and wood ? Write 
the first letter of the word only 

9. Suppose it were Sunday to-day. What day would it have been the 
day before yesterday ? 

10. What number follows next but one after 19 ? 

11. If February comes after January, make two crosses here ; but 

if not, make one cross here 

12. Suppose your mother were ill and sent you for the doctor, but you 
found it was raining. Think what you should do : (1) Wait until the 
rain has stopped ? (2) Get a mackintosh or umbrella, and go at once 
through the rain ? (3) Go to the post office and telegraph to him ? 
(4) Ask your little sister to go instead ? Write here the number of the 
correct answer 

13. Draw a line under the word which contains the first letter of the alphabet 
more times than any other word does : cap, Adam, atlas, black, 
almanac, bluebottle. 

14. 1 Put a figure 1 in the space which is inside both the triangle and the 
square, but not inside the circle ; put a figure 2 in the space which is 
inside the square, but outside both the circle and triangle. 




(*) i a mark is allowed for each part of this question. 



232 

15. "It takes about minutes to boil an egg." A number is missing 

from this sentence ; if it is more than 10, write it here ; if it 

is less, show the number by making strokes here 

16. Cross out the three wrong words in the following sentence: "Most 
motor-cars are driven by wind, steam, petrol, gas." 

17. A wheel is part of a cart ; 
An foot is part of an inch ? 

If one sentence only is correct, cross out the last word in the in- 
correct sentence ; if both are true, write your name here ; 

otherwise do nothing. 

18. Fill in the missing word: " Daisies, tulips, lilies, and buttercups are 
all " 

19. In the following sentence only one word out of the last five is needed. 
Put a ring round the word that is right : " Nights are longest in June, 
summer, jellyfish, winter, Hampstead." 

20. Draw a line from the corner marked A, passing across the first square, 
between the second and sixth squares, between the sixth and seventh 
squares, under the seventh square, between the eleventh and twelfth 
squares, and across the sixteenth square to the corner marked B. 



A 



1 


2 


3 


4 


5 


<8 


7 


8 


9 


10 


II 


12 


13 


14 


15 


16 



B 



21. In the following words find one letter which is contained in only three 
of the words, and then cross out the remaining word which does not 
contain that letter : 

heap, April, drake, lark. 

22-23. * Write down four more words made up (like the first two words) 
out of three or four of the following letters : a, e, r, t. 
(l) ate, (2) tare, (3) , (4) ,(5) ,(6) 

24. Read these words ; and think what their meaning would be if they 
were in the right order : 

people church dance go to to. 

If the sentence is untrue, put a line round the word which makes it 
wrong. But if the sentence is true, cross it all out. 

(M Half a mark is awarded for each correct word. 



233 

25. * In the picture below you are looking at the reflection of a clock and 

some words in a mirror. What do the words say ? 

What would be the actual time, if you could turn round and look 
at the clock itself ? 




6. COMPLETION. 

This test is based upon the well-known Combinations-Methode devised 
as a test of mental efficiency in school children at the request of the educa- 
tional authorities of Breslau by the late Professor Ebbinghaus. I give two 
samples. The first, like the material used by most investigators, including 
Professor Ebbinghaus himself, is in the form of a simple narrative. It is, 
in fact, taken from Stevenson's fable of The Two Matches. The completion 
of stories, however, depends more upon visual imagination than upon reason- 
ing ; and experiments show that the same method applied to an abstract 
argument gives far higher correlations with intelligence. The second passage, 
therefore, is more philosophical in character. It forms the opening para- 
graph of Bacon's Essay on Revenge. An ethical discussion is of all abstract 
arguments perhaps the easiest for children to follow. Nevertheless, the 
present passage presents considerable difficulty to all but those in the highest 
standard of the elementary schools, or of central or secondary school merit. 

The instructions are as follows : "In every blank space fill in one word, 
and one word only, to complete the sense of the story " (or "of the argu- 
ment "). No time limit is imposed. 

The missing- word device is applicable to tests of almost every form, 
In disconnected form — consisting of a set of separate sentences only — it often 
provides a quick and convenient form of test dealing with informational 
subjects, such as science or history — a form, too, which is more reliable, and 
easier to evaluate, than the customary list of questions or request for essays. 

Test 26. — Completion (Story). 

The Two (1) 

One (2) there was a traveller in the wood in California, in 

the (3) season, when the (4) were blowing strong. 

He had ridden a (5) way, and he was (6) and 

hungry, and dismounted from his (7) to smoke a (8) 

But when he (9) in his pocket, he found but two (10) 

He struck the (11) and it would (12) light. 

I 1 ) No mark is awarded for correctly reading "co^ee room" ; this is inserted for demonstration only. 



234 

"Here is a (13) state of things!" (14) the 

traveller. 

"Dying for a (15) ; only one (16) left; and 

that certain to miss fire. Was there ever a creature so (17) ? 

And yet," thought the traveller, " suppose I (18) this match 

and (19) my pipe, and shake out the (20) here in the 

grass — the (21) might catch on (22) for it is 

(23) like tinder ; and while I snatch out the flames in front, they 

(24) evade and run behind me and (25) upon yon 

bush of poison oak ; before (26) could reach it, that (27) 

have blazed up ; over the bush I see a pine tree hung with . . . (28) . . . . ; 

that too would fly in fire upon the instant to its topmost (29) , and 

the flame of that long torch — how would the trade wind take and brandish 

(30) through the inflammable forest ! I (31) this 

dell roar in a moment with the joint voice of the wind and (32) 

I see (33) gallop for my (34) , and the flying con- 
flagration chase (35) outflank me through the hills ; . . . . (36) .... 

see this pleasant (37) burn for (38) , and the cattle 

(39) and the springs dried up and the farmer (40) 

and (41) children cast upon the world. What a world hangs 

upon this moment ! " 

With that he struck the (42) and it (43) fire. 

"Thank (44) !" said the (45) , and put his 

(46) in his pocket. 

Test 27. — Completion (Argument). 

Of (1) 

Revenge is a (2) of wild justice, which the more man's 

nature runs to, the (3) ought law to weed it out. For as for the 

first wrong, it (4) but offend the law ; (5) the revenge 

of that (6) putteth the law out of office. 

(7) , in taking revenge a (8) is but even with 

(9) enemy; but in passing it (10) he is 

(11) ; for it is a (12) part to pardon. And Solomon, I 

am sure, (13) : "It (14) the glory of a man to 

(15) by an offence." 

That which is past is (16) and irrecoverable, and wise men 

have enough to do with things present and to (17) Therefore 

they do but trifle with themselves that labour in (18) matters. 

There is (19) man doth a wrong for the (20) 

sake ; but thereby to (21) himself profit, or (22) , 

or honour, (23) the like (24) why should I be 

(25) with a (26) for loving himself better than 

(27) ? And (28) any man should do (29) 

merely out of ill-nature, why, yet it is but (30) the thorn 

(31) briar, which (32) or scratch, (33) 

they can do no other. 

The (34) tolerable sort of revenge is for those wrongs 

(35) there is no law to remedy; but then let a man take 

(36) the revenge be such (37) there is (38) 

law to punish ; else a man's (39) is still beforehand, and it is 

two for (40) 



235 



(1) Matches 

(2) day 

(3) rainy 

(4) trades 

(5) long 

(6) tired 

(7) horse 

(8) pipe 

(9) felt 

(10) matches 

(11) first 
<12) not 



Key. 

Test 26 — (Completion : Stoey). 



(13) strange 

(14) thought 

(15) smoke 

(16) match 

(17) unfortunate 

(18) strike 

(19) light 

(20) dottle 

(21) grass 

(22) fire 

(23) dry 

(24) might 



(25) seize 

(26) I 

(27) would 

(28) creepers 

(29) bough 

(30) it 

(31) hear 

(32) fire 

(33) myself 

(34) life 

(35) and 

(36) I 



(37) farmstead 

(38) days 

(39) roasted 

(40) killed 

(41) his 

(42) match 

(43) missed 

(44) Heaven 

(45) traveller 

(46) pipe 



Test 27 — (Completion : Argument). 



(1) Revenge 

(2) kind 

(3) more 

(4) doth 

(5) but 

(6) wrong 

(7) Certainly 

(8) man 

(9) his 
(10) over 



(11) superior 

(12) prince's 

(13) saith 

(14) is 

(15) pass 

(16) gone 

(17) come 

(18) past 

(19) no 

(20) wrong's 



(21) purchase 

(22) pleasure 

(23) or 

(24) And 

(25) angry 

(26) man 

(27) me 

(28) if 

(29) wrong 

(30) like 



(31) briar 

(32) prick 

(33) because 

(34) most 
(36) which 

(36) heed 

(37) as 

(38) no 

(39) enemy 

(40) one 



Note. — Since the foregoing Appendix was set up in type, several sets of 
collected group-tests — the "Terman," the " Otis," the "National Intelligence 
Scale " — have reached this country from America ; and their titles should be 
added to the bibliography below (p. 414). With the assistance of a small 
number of British teachers and psychologists, I am testing the applicability 
of these scales — duly modified to eliminate American peculiarities — to school 
children in this country. Professor Terman has also given his generous 
permission for us to attempt an English re-standardisation of his " Stanford 
Version " of the Binet tests. We should gladly welcome the co-operation of 
any who are experimenting with these several scales. 



APPENDIX IV. 

SUPPLEMENTARY TESTS OF INTELLIGENCE. 
B. ORAL OR INDIVIDUAL TESTS. 

The following are the oral or individual tests of intelligence, other than 
those of Binet and Simon, which have been found most satisfactory in the 
foregoing investigation. 1 The first two are suitable only for children who can 
read and understand simple printed matter, i.e., who are above the educational 
level of standard I. But for such children, especially for older and brighter 
children about scholarship age or scholarship standard, they appear to give 
results distinctly superior to those obtained by the Binet-Simon scale. 

1. ABSURDITIES. 

This test may be used for a written group test as well as for an individual 
oral test. For a group test with this material the instructions are as follows : 
" This story is full of ridiculous and impossible statements — words or phrases 
which contradict each other or the rest of the passage. Some persons have 
found twenty or thirty absurdities. Cross out the words or phrases which 
you think are absurd." No time limit is imposed. 

More fruitful results, however, will be obtained with an oral procedure, 
since then the child can explain the reasons for his criticisms. This method 
was employed to obtain the results recorded in the table (p. 222). The child 
is first asked to read the passage through to himself , without further explana- 
tion. Younger children should read the passage aloud, so that the examiner 
can, if necessary, assist them with the harder words. The child is then 
asked if he notices anything peculiar about the story. Usually, he has 
remarked the absurdities in the last sentence, even if he has not smiled at 
the earlier ones. He is then told that the story is full of such absurdities, 
that some persons have found as many as twenty or thirty, and that he is 
to find as many as he can. He is now required to read the whole through 
a second time, aloud, beginning with the title ; and instructed to point out 
each absurdity as he notices it. If, through some misapprehension, he is 
content with discovering only one or two in the first paragraph, and then 
hurries on with the reading, he is asked if that is all he can find, and reminded 
that there are a large number in every paragraph. One mark is given for 
each absurdity spontaneously discovered by the child. The criticism of 
legitimate or possible statements on the ground of fancied absurdity — e.g., 
a denial that the moon might be visible in the daytime — is, of course, not to 
be counted. 

Like a completion-test, an absurdity test can be also cast in discon- 
tinuous form, consisting of a number of separate unconnected sentences, each 
of which (or some of which) contain some inconsistency or absurdity. This 
is the form adopted by Binet. But the number of examples employed by 
him — five in all — is far too few. American investigators have collected a 
larger number ; interspersed them with a number of statements which are 
not impossible or absurd ; and require the child to mark those which he 
considered absurd. The procedure, however, is cumbrous, since even if the 
child's marks are distributed by mere chance the probability is that 50 per 
cent, would be correct. 2 

t 1 ) See p. 200. ( 2 ) Dr. Ballard, however, has since constructed a valuable scale of absurdities, 

graded and discrete in form. 

236 



237 

Test 28. — Absurdities. 

A Sunday in France. 

Ten years ago on a pleasant summer's afternoon in the 
middle of January, 1916, the twelve o'clock express from 
Scotland was rushing past the busy terminus of the Great 
Western Railway at twelve miles an hour. 

A clean-shaven young Englishman, of about fifty years of 
age, stepped lightly from one of the first-class carriages and 
hurried slowly down the platform with both hands in his 
pockets, carrying a heavy bag, and gaily curling the tips of 
his moustache. His strange voice suggested that he was a 
native of Germany, born and bred, no doubt, in Paris ; and 
by his dusty shoes I gathered he had walked over from New 
York that very morning. 

There was not a cloud in the sky ; and, as the rain was 
still falling heavily, he took off his mackintosh and strolled out 
into the crowded streets of the city. The ripening fields of corn 
through which he passed were turning golden as the sun set in 
the south. The square semi-circle of the new moon shone 
brightly in the heavens overhead. The evening shadows grew 
shorter and shorter in the twilight. And a few minutes later, 
with a burst of splendour, the day dawned. 

He was standing on London Bridge watching the grey waters 
of the Severn rush northwards out to sea, and listening to the 
bleating of the sheep on Hampstead Heath. A few feet above 
his head an aeroplane was standing still in the sky ; and beyond 
in the cloud a bright red seagull, with its four broad wings 
outspread, could be seen flying invisibly above the Dutch 
mountains. The clock on the dome of St. Paul's struck the hour. 
One, two, three, he counted, and then ten more strokes. "It 
must be just half-past eleven," he said; "no wonder I am 
thirsty. I must call at a greengrocer's for a glass of salt beef." 

2. GRADED REASONING TESTS. 

Of all the supplementary tests here given the following is, in my view, 
by far the most efficient. It is particularly suitable for older and brighter 
children. It consists of brief questions, preceded by the data necessary for 
answering those questions. From the premisses thus given, the solution to 
each problem can be deduced by- ordinary logical inference. No special 
knowledge, apart from that which is the common property of all normal 
children at the ages tested, is expected or required. Empirically it is found 
that reasoning tests of this character form the best tests of intelligence, so 
far as intelligence can be tested by tasks of a single kind v -'Tt should be 
remembered, however, that, if time allows, it is always better to use tests 
of several different types, and not limit the examination to one form, however 
excellent in theory. 1 

There are in the present series seventeen problems. They are arranged 
in order of difficulty ; and allocated in groups to successive mental ages, 
two to each year. The principle adopted for the age-assignments resembles 

(*) A fuller account of the construction and use of the tests will be found in Journ. Exp. Ped., Vol. V. 
Nos. 2 and 3, 1919, pp. 68 et seq. The appendix there published contains fifty such tests, suitable for a more 
precise differentiation. Those used in the present investigation and printed below consist of what is there 
described as the " short series." Where it is desired to obtain a more accurate estimate of a child whose 
mental level is already approximately known, for example, in testing children within the same school standard 
the supplementary questions contained in the fuller list of fifty are usually necessary. 




J.J? 



238 



that suggested above for the Binet-Simon scale ; but is somewhat simpler 
in its application. It is, in fact, that which is recommended in the next 
memorandum for the standardisation of educational tests. 1 Each problem 
is assigned to the age at which 50 per cent, of the children can successfully 
answer it, not, as in the Binet-Simon scale, to the age next below. Age is 
taken as age last birthday. Thus, half the children between age 8-0 and 
age 9-0, averaging therefore 8 \ years, should pass the tests headed " 8 years." 
Theoretically, therefore, a child on its eighth birthday passes all the tests 
above the heading " 8 years " and none of the tests below that heading. 
At 8| he passes half the tests immediately below that heading — that is, one 
out of the two in the short list here given for age 8. 

The conversion of the test-score into equivalent age or vice versa also 
follows a simpler rule. Each test counts as half a year, zero falling at 6J. 
Hence, the norm for any age is approximately twice the corresponding school 
standard. The averages actually obtained at each age are given to the 
nearest unit 2 in Table XXXV., together with scores roughly demarcating 
children of Central School and scholarship merit. With these tests there is 

TABLE XXXV 

Norms for Supplementary Tests of Intelligence. 

Averages and Borderlines for Reasoning Tests (Short List). 



Age last 
Birthday. 


Approximate 
Average. 


Borderline for 

Central School 

Ability. 


Borderline for 

Scholarship 

Ability. 


7 - . 

8 - . 

9 - . 

10 - . 

11 - . 

12 - 

13 - . 

14 - . 




2 

4 

6 

8 

10 

12 

14 

16 


5 
7 
9 
11 
13 
15 
16 
17 


8 
10 
12 
14 
16 
17 
17 
17 



at any one age a far greater range of individual variation than with the 
Binet-Simon tests. Thus a high-grade " defective " of fourteen, who reaches 
a mental age of nearly eleven with the Binet-Simon tests, and can read fairly 
fluently, is yet unable to do more than one or two of the simplest reasoning 
tests allotted to ages seven or eight. On the other hand, one of the brightest 
children I have met in the ordinary elementary schools of London (she is the 
daughter of a headmaster in the Council's service, and has since been awarded a 
Christ's Hospital Scholarship) scored, when tested at the age of 9y\-, a mental 
age of 14-5 with the reasoning tests, but only 13-6 with the Binet-Simon tests. 
As with the Binet-Simon tests, each child is to be examined individually 
and orally. 3 The same general procedure, and the same method of recording 
the results, may be observed. 

t 1 ) See below, p. 271. 

( 2 ) For fuller tables and preciser figures see J. Exp. Ped., loc. cit., p. 121. The round numbers place 
the borderlines for ages 10- and 11-, and perhaps for age 9-, a little too low. The exact numbers lie about 
midway between the figures given and the next unit ; e.g., the borderline for scholarship ability appears to 
lie, on an average, at about 14'4 ; but, of course, must vary in different schools and under different 
circumstances. 

( 3 ) For an interesting group experiment with these tests in written form, see M. M. Fairgrieve, " A Mass 
Test with Intelligence Questions," J. Exp. Ped., VI., i., pp. 27 et sea. The written form, however, is inevitably 
less successful, since then the child does not always grasp that he intended to deduce the answer from the 
premisses, and, further, the examiner loses the opportunity for insight into the child's methods by means of 
cross-examination. 






n 



4 



239 

The questions are to be read by the child, himself. For younger children 
it is more convenient to have each problem cut out and pasted, or else clearly 
typed, upon a separate card. The problem is handed to the child with the 
following explanation : " Will you read this, please ? At the end you will 
find a question. When you have read the question, look carefully again at 
what is printed above it, and try whether you can think out the answer." 
The younger and duller children should read each problem aloud. Those 
of higher level (standard III. or above) need only read aloud the first few. 
If unable to pronounce a particular word, or if unfamiliar with its meaning, 
a child may be assisted. When it is clear that the child understands his task, 
he should be left quietly puzzling over the question, forgetful, as far as 
possible, of the examiner's presence. As soon as the answer is given, it is 
accepted with a word of praise, and the child asked to give his reasons. If 
answer and reasons are incorrect, the child is then asked to try again, until 
he either succeeds, or fails in four successive attempts. Every child should 
work forward from the easiest example until he fails on at least three 
consecutive problems. 

One mark is given for each test correctly answered and correctly 
reasoned. The additional trials should not exceed three in all for one test. 
For each unsuccessful attempt a quarter of a mark is deducted. A fraction — 
as a rule, a quarter, a half, or three-quarters respectively — is also deducted 
for an ill-expressed reason, an inadequate reason, or no reason at all. 

Test 29— GRADED REASONING TESTS. 
(Short List.) 

1. Tom runs faster than Jim : 
Jack runs slower than Jim. 

Which is the slowest of the three ? 

7 Years. 

2. Kate is cleverer than May : 
May is cleverer than Jane. 

Who is the cleverest — Jane, Kate, or May ? 

3. I have bought the following Christmas presents : a pipe, a blouse, some 

music, a box of cigarettes, a bracelet, a toy engine, a bat, a book, 

a doll, a walking-stick, and an umbrella. 
My brother is eighteen : he does not smoke, nor play cricket, nor play 

the piano. 
I want to give the walking-stick to my father, and the umbrella to my 

mother. 

Which of the above shall I give my brother ? 

8 Years. 

4. I don't like sea voyages : 
And I don't like the seaside. 

I must spend Easter either in France, or among the Scottish Hills, 
or on the South Coast. 
Which shall it be ? 

5. The person who stole Brown's purse was neither dark, nor tall, nor 

clean-shaven. 
The only persons in the room at the time were — 

1. Jones, who is short, dark, and clean-shaven : 

2. Smith, who is fair, short, and bearded : 

3. Grant, who is dark, tall, but not clean-shaven. 

Who stole Brown's purse ? 



^n 



240 

9 Years. 

6. Three boys are sitting in a row : 
Harry is to the left of Willie : 
George is to the left of Harry. 

Which boy is in the middle ? 

7. In cold, damp climates; root crops, like potatoes and turnips, grow best : 
In temperate climates, there are abundant pastures, and oats and barley 

nourish : 
In sub-tropical climates, wheat, olives, and vines flourish : 
In tropical climates, date-palms and rice flourish. 

The ancient Greeks lived largely on bread, with oil instead of 
butter : they had wine to drink and raisins for fruit. 
Which climate do you think tbey had ? 

10 Years. 

8. There are four roads here : 
I have come from the south and want to go to Melton. 
The road to the right leads somewhere else : 
Straight ahead it leads only to a farm. 

In which direction is Melton — North, South, East, or West ? 

9. The doctor thinks Violet has caught some illness. 
If she has a rash, it is probably chicken-pox, measles, or scarlet 

fever : 
If she has been ailing with a cold or cough, she may develop 
whooping-cough, measles, or mumps. 
She has been sneezing and coughing for some days : and now spots are 
appearing on her face and arms. 

What do you think is the matter with Violet ? 

1 1 Years. 

10. Where the climate is hot, gum-trees and rubber will grow : 
Heather and grass will grow only where it is cold : 

Heather and rubber require plenty of moisture : 
Grass and gum-trees will grow only in fairly dry regions : 
Near the river Amazon it is very hot and very damp. 
Which of the above grows there ? 

11. Father has just come home in a brand new overcoat : there is clay on 
his boots and flour on his hat. 

The only places he can have been to are Northgate, Southgate, West- 
gate, or the City ; and he has not had time to go to more than 
one of these. 
There is no clay anywhere in the streets except where the pavement 

is up for repair. 
There are tailors' shops only in Southgate, Westgate, and the City. 
There are flour mills only in Northgate, Westgate, and the City. 
I know the roads are not being repaired in the City, though they may 
be in the other places. 

Where has father been ? 



241 

12 Years. 

12. Field-mice devour the honey stored by the humble-bees : the honey 

which they store is the chief food of the humble-bees. 
Near towns, there are far more cats than in the open country. 
Cats kill all kinds of mice, 

Where, then, do you think there are most humble-bees — 
in the neighbourhood of towns or in the open country ? 

13. I started from the church and walked 100 yards : 
I turned to the right and walked 50 yards : 

I turned to the right again and walked 100 yards. 
How far am I from the church ? 

13 Years. 

14. A pound of meat should roast for half an hour : 

Two pounds of meat should roast for three-quarters of an hour : 
Three pounds of meat should roast for one hour : 
Eight pounds of meat should roast for two hours and a quarter : 
Nine pounds of meat should roast for two hours and a half. 

From this can you discover a simple rule by which you 

can tell from the weight of a joint for how long it 

should roast ? 

15. What conclusion can you draw from the following facts ? 
Iron nails will not float in a pool : 

A cup of pure gold dust weighs nearly twenty times as much as a cup 

of water of the same size : 
If you drop a silver sixpence or a copper coin into a puddle, it will sink 

to the bottom : 
A cubic inch (about a tablespoonful) of water weighs less than half an 

ounce ; a cubic inch of brass weighs over two ounces : 
A leaden weight will drop to the bottom of the ocean. 

Sum up all these observations in one short statement of the 
following form : " Most are " 

14 Years. 

16. John said : " I heard my clock strike yesterday, ten minutes before the 

first gun fired. I did not count the strokes, but I am sure it struck 
more than once, and I think it struck an odd mxmber." 
John was o\it all the morning from the earliest hours : and his clock 
stopped at five to five the same afternoon. 

When do you think the first gun fired ? 

17. Captain Watts and his son James have been found shot — the father in the 

chest and the son in the back. Both clearly died instantaneously. 

A gun fired close to the person — as, for example, when a man shoots him- 
self — will blacken and even burn the skin or clothes : fired from a 
greater distance, it will leave no such mark. 

The two bodies were found near the middle of a large hall used as a rifle 
range. Its floor is covered with damp sand, which shows every foot- 
print distinctly. Inside the room there are two pairs of footprints 
only. A third man standing just outside the door or window could 
aim at any part of the room : but the pavement outside would 
show no footmarks. v 



<? 




A 



242 

Under Captain Watts' body was found a gun : no such weapon was 
found near James. 

In each case the coat, where the bullet entered, was blackened with gun- 
powder, and the cloth a little singed. 

Captain Watts was devoted to his son, and would have died sooner than 
harm him purposely : hence it is impossible to suppose that he 
killed him deliberately, even in self-defence. But some think that 
James secretly disliked his father, and hoped to inherit his fortune 
at his death. 

(1) Was Captain Watts' death due to murder, accident, or 
suicide ? 

(2) Was James' death due to murder, accident, or suicide 1 

3. THE PORTEUS MAZE=TESTS. 

Mazes and miniature labyrinths have been used freely to study speed and 
manner of learning among animals. Power to learn, educability, is for some 
writers the very definition of intelligence. And it is, therefore, natural that 
what has proved so successful for the investigation of educability in animals 
should also be adopted as a possible test for intelligence in the child. Such 
a test would have the great advantage of being embodied in non-linguistic 
material, and requiring other than a merely verbal manifestation of general 
capacity. 

For this purpose the only systematic set of maze-tests is that arranged 
by Dr. Porteus, Director of Research at the Vineland Training School in 
America. The mazes, eleven in number, are reproduced on the following 
pages. 1 They have been chosen to form an age-scale upon principles similar 
to those that underlie the Binet-Simon tests. 

The procedure which I recommend, slightly modified from that of Dr. 
Porteus, is as follows : For all children above the level of the infants' school, 
the examiner begins with the maze for age V. The child is told to " suppose 
this is the plan of the paths in a garden. These lines are walls which you cannot 
get over. Start with the pen from the mark at the top, and find your way 
out of the garden by the quickest path. Show me, first of all, any openings 
that you can see." (The two openings are indicated.) " All the other paths 
are blocked. Don't go up any of the blocked turnings. Go down this path 
from the top, and then out by the first opening you can find." To avoid 
marking the paper, the child uses a dry pen or a pointed stick. After he has 
once begun, he should not lift his pen from the paper. 2 

With the succeeding patterns the openings are not pointed out first of 
all. Emphasise that the child must find his way out without turning up 
any of the blocked paths ; and, as soon as he enters a blind alley and 
has discovered that he is blocked, do not allow him to correct his mistake 
by retracing his path, but bring him back to the starting point for a second 

(") I have to thank Dr. Porteus for his courteous permission to reproduce these figures. An earlier 
version has already been published in this country in the Journal of Experimental Pedagogy (Vol. III., No. 2 t 
p. 113) ; but the mazes there shown are in an unrevised form, and are printed on a scale too reduced for 
actual use. The tests originally assigned to ages V., VI., and XIII. have now been transferred to ages IV.. V., 
and XIV. respectively. In place of the earlier unsatisfactory VH.-year-test two new tests have been inserted 
for ages VI. and VII. (not differing, however, as I think, widely enough from each other in difficulty). And in 
the patterns retained a few slight changes have been introduced, apparently to fit them a little more closely 
to the levels required. The tests, as thus revised, are described and discussed in full in a recent monograph 
published by the Vineland Training School, The Porteus Tests: Vineland Revision, September, 1919. 

( 2 ) Dr. Porteus requires the child to mark his path visibly in pencil. This entails a fresh sheet for every 
child, and, with the same child, after every error. For such a procedure blanks in large quantities can be 
obtained from the Extension Department of the Training School, Vineland, N.J. 



243 

trial. If for some reason — for example, a suspected accident in a successful 
second trial — a third attempt seems needed, invert the diagram and treat 
it as a new test. 

Dr. Porteus states that the tests need be continued only until the child 
entirely fails with two successive mazes. I suggest that, unless it is plainly 
evident that the remainder are too hard, each child should be allowed to 
attempt every test. 

The following method is recommended for scoring the results. One mark 
is awarded for each test correctly performed on the first trial. Half a mark 
only is allowed if a second trial is necessary for success. To the total number 
of marks thus gained, add four marks for presumable suocess in imaginary tests 
for ages I. to IV. ; the result will give the child's score roughly in terms of a 
mental age. There is no test for age XIII. But four trials are allowed with 
the mazes for ages XII. and XIV. With that for age XII. a full mark is 
allowed for a success in any of the first three trials ; and half a mark for a 
success in the fourth. But with that for age XIV. two marks are allowed for 
a success in the first trial ; and for every further trial needed half a mark is 
deducted : thus a child who does not succeed until the second trial scores 
only one and a half, and so on. 

With the patterns for ages III. and IV. the child has simply to follow 
the general shape of the figure by drawing his pencil between the two lines. 
The examiner demonstrates by visibly drawing with his pencil on a separate 
copy. In the pattern for age III. the child passes if he does not cross the 
lines, or cut off corners, in more than three places ; in that for age IV., if he 
does not cross the lines more than twice. In either case, a full mark is allowed 
for a success in either one of the two permissible trials. With the maze for 
Test V. half a mark is deducted if the child passes out of the second, or 
lower, opening. 

For English children the standardisation does not appear altogether 
perfect. The percentage in each age-group, passing the tests assigned to 
their own year, differs much from maze to maze. For example (counting 
two half-successes scored by two different children as equivalent to one full 
success scored by a single child), only 62 per cent, of the children aged 5 
pass the maze for age V., while as many as 84 per cent, aged 8 pass the 
maze for age VIII.; and, indeed, even by modifying the given mazes slightly, 
or selecting mazes afresh from a new and larger series, it would be difficult 
to hit upon an evenly graduated scale containing only one test to mark the 
exact median for each year. Hence, I suggest that the mazes as a whole 
be regarded as forming a single graded test-series, roughly increasing in 
difficulty, rather than as marking definite mental ages. In Table XXXIV. I 
append norms for London children. For strict comparisons mental ages 
should be deduced from these. But it will be seen that those obtained by 
the simpler method and upon the original assumptions differ only by a 
fraction. 

In any case, the examiner should endeavour to observe the cause of the 
child's failure. Here, as elsewhere, the significance of the test lies quite as 
much in the child's method of attack as in his ultimate achievement. The 
cause may be an intellectual one. The child may become confused ; his 
power of systematic attention may be unable to cope with a task so com- 
plex ; he may be unable to follow with his unaided eye the longer paths and 
more devious routes, or he may fail to retain the results of his observation 
so as to guide the movements of his hand,; he may be unable to plan, or to 
profit by his past mistakes. Quite as commonly the cause is partly emotional. 
The child may be over-confident, or careless ; he seems unable to take 
thought beforehand, or too dashing and impulsive to carry out his thoughts. 



244 

The peculiar value of the tests lies in the fact that the material is non- 
linguistic. Many borderline cases of suspected mental deficiency, particu- 
larly slow and steady dullards with a manual or industrial bias, fail hope- 
lessly with the Binet-Simon scale, and yet unexpectedly succeed with the 
maze tests ; and, conversely, many of the more unstable type, girls especially, 
who answer glibly with the former, have not the prudence, the forethought, 
the maintenance of attention and alertness which the latter demand. The 
maze-tests, therefore, supplement, though they cannot, I think, supplant, 
the other scales in a profitable way. It is perhaps in estimating social as 
distinguished from educational efficiency that they will be found most 
helpful. 



Note on the Average Upper Limit for the Development of Intelligence. — It will be noticed that the Porteus 
t ests, like the version given above for the Binet-Simon scale, make no provision for the years beyond sixteen ; 
and so, by implication, seem to set an upper limit to the growth of intelligence at about that age. 1 I have 
indeed, in the text (p. 170) explicitly taken the mental age cf 16 as representing the average level reached by 
normal London adults. Terman, in the Stanford Revision, and most other investigators, have made a like 
assumption. Influenced, however, by the low average revealed with the Binet tests among American recruits 
(13-5 years), the latest suggestions infer that mental growth must cease two or three years earlier than has 
hitherto been believed ; and propose, in calculating the mental ratio for adults, a divisor of 13 or 14. 

With this extreme deduction my own results hardly conform. Apart from the immense accession of 
acquired knowledge and skill, setting aside, too, the gradual emergence of new powers of character and feeling, 
which the process of adolescence seems to confer, there can, indeed, be little doubt that, after the age of leaving 
school, the further development of natural intelligence is, in most persons, far smaller than is commonly 
thought. Nevertheless, the opposite assumption — that intelligence grows by equal annual increments up to 
the time of puberty, and then abruptly ceases — is equally mistaken. The error perhaps comes largely from 
supposing that a limit found with tests of one or two restricted types can be assigned as a fixed flat high- 
water-mark for intellectual processes of every observable kind. 

My present conclusion is based, not upon experiments with the Binet-Simon scale, but upon supple- 
mentary tests of intelligence, such as those above described. My data are incomplete and provisional. 2 They 
have been obtained, not only from students in Universities and Training Colleges, who are, of course, of super- 
normal grade, but also from adults in various spheres of life, who from their educational history may be regarded 
as median or average specimens of the ordinary elementary school class. Enquiries begun in the new con- 
tinuation schools, whereby the same individuals will be tested and re-tested year after year, may, I hope, 
eventually return a conclusive reply. 

It is not sufficient to compare, age by age, as is so commonly done, merely the average number of marks 
obtained, or the average number of questions answered (the procedure illustrated in figure 26) ; for there is 
nothing to show whether the units are of equal magnitude throughout the scale, or whether the last test- 
questions are hard enough, easy enough, or graded finely enough, to differentiate the averages for the later 
years. The original measurements must first be converted into terms of the standard deviations of the relevant 
age-groups (as was done in constructing figure 21). 

I have, therefore, taken as zero the average performance of children aged nine — the age about which the 
standard deviation is approximately equal to the annual increment or mental year. I have treated the standard 
deviations for all the age-groups as theoretically equivalent, both to one another, and to the standard deviation 
(mental year, or annual increment) at nine, which thus becomes the unit for the successive age-averages, 
expressed as divergencies above or below the average nine-year level. Thus measured, the averages for the 
years between five or six and twenty-two or twenty-three, when all the test-results are amalgamated in a 
single series, lie nearly upon a logarithmic curve. The following equation roughly fits the line of growth 
obtained : — 

15-a 

A=4-10 10 , 

where As mental level (expressed as above), and o = chronological age. 

This curve is asymptotic. By the form of its equation it progressively approaches a horizontal line 4 units 
above the arbitrary zero, that is, a level above the mental age at nine by four times the mental year at nine. If, 
f o r purposes of measurement, the mental year remained as large throughout the next few years, this might 

(') Dr. Porteus, as I understand, is now experimenting with mazes for adults of higher intelligence. 
( 2 ) They will, I hope, be published very shortly elsewhere in fuller detail than can be given here. 



245 

seem to imply that, the upper limit of intellectual growth was the mental age of thirteen (9+4). But, as we 
have seen, the annual increment decreases steadily. 1 It is, however, still discernible and still measurable, 
not only after the calendar age of thirteen, but (particularly when we compare te3t-results from adults in the 
twenties) even after the age of sixteen ; yet, as contrasted with the standard deviation, though theoretically 
significant, it becomes negligible in practice. 

My provisional adherence, therefore, to the conventional limit of sixteen — a figure chosen partly because 
my mental ratios for adults would not otherwise be comparable with those of previous investigators, and 
partly because sixteen is for defectives the age of leaving the special school — is thus not without experimenta 1 
support. Since, as I have argued, the cessation of mental growth is extremely gradual, the choice of a limit 
must be exceedingly arbitrary. I would suggest that, when a larger number of individuals have been followed 
up beyond the stage of adolescence, the final selection should be determined by noting what divisor in the 
long run keeps the mental ratios of adults, particularly of subnormal and supernormal adults, approximately 
equal to the figure obtaining for each during the years of their childhood. Meanwhile, those who consider 
that, both here and in my borderline for adult defectives, I am too conservative, that my upper limit is 
too high in the former case and too low in the latter, might be willing to accept as a temporary compromise 
an age of 15-0 for the virtual cessation of normal mental growth, and one of 9'0 for the adult defective 
borderline. This implies a mental ratio of 60 per cent, as the predictive line of demarcation for such 
persons; and the inclusion of "supervision" cases as well as "institution" cases (in the senses defined 
above) under the term permanent mental deficiency. 



t 1 ) Since, during a large portion of the school year, the standard deviations, measured in terms of age, 
are in arithmetical progression (see p. 158), it should seem perhaps that the annual increments, measured in 
terms of the standard deviation, would be in harmonical progression. The curve, however, deduced on this 
basis rises too high to fit the figures for the later years. 

The non-mathematical reader, who finds himself bewildered by the technicalities of my general argument 
may perhaps best seize my meaning if he turns to figure 21 (p. 139) and notes that (up to the age of XIII. 
or XIV. — the rest of the diagram is untrustworthy) the intervals between successive years become smaller 
and smaller, and the longer vertical lines dividing them become more and more closely packed. An artificial 
illustration of more regular condensation will be seen in the scale- divisions to the left of figure 24 (p. 162) ; 
the scale is, in fact, here actually logarithmic. If now in figure 21 he supposes the ages after XII. or XIII. to 
get telescoped upon each other in the same even way, he will realise at once that the year-intervals towards 
the age of twenty, though still discoverable, would become negligibly small, and so ultimately disappear. 



246 

Figures 28 to 38. 
Test 30 .— PORTEUS MAZES. 

Figure 28, Year III. 
Allow demonstration, 2 trials, and 3 errors, 




247 

Figure 29. Year IV. 
Allow demonstration, 2 trials, and 2 errors. 



» r— — 



248 



Figure 30. Year V, 



Demonstrate openings : deduct \ mark for 2nd trial. 



s 

I 



249 



a 




t* 



^ 



H3 



O 



I 



250 



< 






fe 



1 




251 

Figure 33. Year VIII. 
I mark for 2nd trial, 



«s 










I 























































252 

Figure 34. Year IX, 
J mark for 2nd trial. 



II 




253 

FiGtntE 35. Year X. 
J mark for 2nd trial. 



ZI 

s 

i 






254 

Figure 36. Year XI. 
£ mark for 2nd trial. 




255 



Figure 37, Year XII. 
1 mark for 1st, 2nd or 3rd trials ; \ mark for 4th trial. 



256 



Figtjbe 38. Yeae XIV. 
2, !£,!,£ marks for 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th trials respectively. 



Memorandum III. 

TESTS OF EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENTS. 



1. NEED AND USES OF SCHOLASTIC TESTS. 

For the measurement of school progress there is no scheme of tests, 
widely used and popularly recognised, claiming the same position and 
enjoying the same prestige as the Binet-Simon scale for the measurement 
of native intelligence. In collaboration with Monsieur V. Vaney, Binet 
and Simon did, indeed, attempt what they styled a " barometer of in- 
struction " — a set of graded exercises in reading, spelling, and arithmetic. 1 
But the tests were compiled upon a rougher plan ; and were of necessity 
suited only to those educated in French schools, speaking and writing the 
French language, and using the French systems of weights and measures. 
In other countries they have attracted little notice. 

At first sight, it might seem that teachers need no assistance from psycho- 
logists in assessing educational attainments ; they can make their own claps 
tests. Nor is the presumption altogether mistaken. Where qualitative 
estimates are concerned, the intuitive judgment of the experienced teacher 
is likely to be both surer and speedier than the laborious deductions of the 
statistical psychologist. But in quantitative exactitude it is no longer the 
same ; here the records of the practical teacher appear — not always, indeed, 
without advantage — to drop short of the high ideals of theory. This has 
been demonstrated by scientific studies upon the validity of school marks ; 
and more recently, 2 in America, there has arisen an eagerness, perhaps too 
great an eagerness, to supplement traditional examinations by psychological 
tests, and to apply the new statistical methods to the survey of educational 
systems. 

The aim of such tests and surveys should not be to criticise. They are 
weapons of enquiry, not of inquisition. Their office is to serve the teacher, 
not to rule him ; to enable him, in fact, to do more easily what already he 
desires to do, but can now do only with difficulty, or not at all : that is, to assess 
— independently of all personal or subjective standards, whether his own or 
those of an external scrutineer — the comparative level of his individual pupils 
or of his class taken as a whole. For the rest, it is to be remembered that if 
he deviates from quantitative exactitude, such exactitude is not his immediate 

t 1 ) See, for example, Binet and Simon, The Development of Intelligence (1905), translated by E. Kite, 
p. 70 et sect. ; and id., Mentally Defective Children, translated by W. B. Drummond, p. 54. 

( 2 ) It is now nearly twenty years since Rice applied trie first scientific test of educational attainments to 
measure improvement in a definite school subject — spelling ; and just ten years since Thorndike published 
the first graded scale to measure a definite school product — handwriting. For the literature of later investi- 
gators, see bibliographies contained in the volumes cited in Appendix IV. (p. 414). The chief disadvantage 
of the American scales, apart from differences of idiom and values for money, weights, and measures, is that, 
as explained below, the averages and norms are usually given only for school-classes or "grades," not for 
age-groups. 

S 257 



258 

business. The examinations of the teacher should be adaptable to the 
shifting needs of the moment ; hence, he follows the method of the extemporised 
test. The psychologist seeks universal comparability and numerical pre- 
cision ; he, consequently, is bound to the method of the standardised test. 
Each procedure has its special uses, its special merits, its special short- 
comings. Each can find something to learn from the other. 

Psychologists, physicians, social investigators, and other officers who, 
without themselves being school teachers, desire from time to time to gauge 
the school attainments of the child, are compelled, by the exigencies of their 
work, either to adopt, or to evolve for themselves, some simple scheme of 
educational tests. To them, as well as to professional teachers, my own 
attempts, imperfect as they are, may be of some small interest and service. 

The selection described in this memorandum includes the various 
scholastic tests used for the preceding enquiry and cited from time to time in 
the foregoing pages. Both in general character and in age-assignment, 
the test-questions and test-material are virtually identical with those 
employed in my previous investigation upon the distribution and relations 
of educational abilities. The age-averages or norms, therefore, may be 
accepted as defining, in concrete detail and with rough exactitude, the level 
of the several units — educational " ages," " standards," or " grades " — in 
terms of which school attainments were then measured and reviewed. 

Purpose of Present Scale of Tests. 

The object of the tests is to provide a set of scales measuring, as scien- 
tifically as possible, the attainments of individual children in all the funda- 
mental subjects of the elementary school curriculum. Especially have I had 
in mind the purpose for which hitherto such tests have been mainly used in 
this country, namely, to determine the scholastic abilities of borderline cases 
found in, or recommended for, the special (M.D.) schools. The series contains, 
first, the complete test-sheets, questions, and other materials needed for 
administering the tests ; and, secondly, a set of tables for deciding whether 
the performance of any given individual child corresponds with the average for 
normal children of his years, whether it deviates from that average by more 
than the average or " standard " deviation, whether it approaches the border- 
line dividing the normal from the mentally deficient, or, finally, whether it 
descends to, or even sinks below, the average for deficient children of equal 
age. 

The Age-Basis in Scholastic Tests. 

The conception underlying each of the scales is that of an " educational 
age." Throughout I have sought, however tentatively, to construct such 
tests as may permit the examiner to measure attainments in terms of what 
may be called — in a broader sense than usual — " mental years." The figures 
give, as it were, a time-table of intellectual progress. They seek to indicate 
in quantitative terms, first, at what differing rates children of diverse types, 
the slow-coach and the non-stop express, the lumbering goods truck and the 
first-class train, pass the chief stations along the various routes of the educa- 
tional journey ; and, secondly, how far each one, with its particular freight of 
fuel and pressure of steam, may be expected to travel toward that distant 
terminus, which forms the destination of all, but which few will reach. 

The unit of the mental year is, I admit, a conception suited only to a 
preliminary enquiry. In America scales and norms for scholastic abilities 
have been based almost exclusively upon averages, not for each age, but for 
each class, for the successive " grades," as they are termed. This is as though 



259 

we in this country were taking figures merely for the several " standards." 1 
To gather data on this basis avoids, no doubt, the troublesome dislocation 
of classes that the sorting out of ages (when the same tests are not given 
throughout the school) must inevitably entail. But the composition of 
" grades " in America, like that of " standards " in England, varies so much 
from school to school that the results must always be of uncertain significance 
even in the country where they were got, and in all other countries of no use 
whatever. 

A few American psychologists, however, following Professor Thorndike's 
enterprising lead, have endeavoured to find a unit more scientific than 
either age or grade — a unit that shall be demonstrably of equal value 
throughout the scale. In any series of problems, the interval of difficulty 
which separates problem number one from problem number two should, 
it is said, be identical in magnitude with the interval of difficulty which 
separates problem number two from problem number three ; and so 
throughout the series. The ideal is praiseworthy ; but the methods may be 
questioned. The statistical technique, evolved for selecting such test-problems , 
differs with different investigators and for different subjects ; in every 
instance it is cumbrous and abstruse. 2 Certainly, for the uncompromising 
precision of a scientist's research, a technical unit, intelligible only to the 
initiated — the "probable error," the "percentage difference," or the 
" standard deviation " — must in the end be unavoidable. But, for ordinary 
use in ordinary hands, something simpler, something speedier, something 
self-evident is wanted. The unit must embody an everyday conception, 
some formula in origin less pedantic, in application more practical. Accord- 
ingly, for the busy teacher and the visiting psychologist the " mental year," 
however crude, would seem, as a unit, to be sufficiently exact, as it is emi- 
nently serviceable. Laboratory tools are for the laboratory ; the journeyman 
carries a pocket footrule, not a micrometer screw. 

The Schools" Tested. 

The figures in the tables are derived from the examination of somewhat 
slender numbers. A single investigator is necessarily confined, with so large 
a range of tests, to a narrow range of schools ; and, whenever he revises his 
test- questions — a process inevitable in the early phases of his work — he must 
sacrifice all his preceding data and base his finished tables solely upon figures 
got by the new material. 

In the final experiments nineteen ordinary elementary schools or depart- 
ments have taken part, and eleven special (M.D.) schools. These contain in 
all rather over five thousand normal children, and rather under fifteen 
hundred mentally deficient children. In many instances, however, it became 
impossible to give the whole series of tests throughout the entire department. 
But, so far as was possible, complete age-groups were selected. As a rule, 
the total number of representatives for any one year may be taken as about 
five hundred for the normals, and about one hundred and fifty for the de- 
fectives. At the youngest and oldest ages, both among normals and 
defectives, the numbers were very much smaller ; in consequence, for the 

(*) The Code of Regulations for Elementary Schools, issued by the Board of Education some thirty 
years ago, enumerated rough standards of attainments to be expected in the various classes, which thus 
acquired a name which only recently they have begun to drop. The formulation of such minimum standards, 
in itself a useful piece of work, was, as there given, too vague and tentative to do more than confer some 
definiteness of aim. The system of examination and of payment by results, which were associated with this 
discarded scheme, still unfortunately cause many older teachers to look with suspicion upon all attempts to 
discover norms and to define objectives. The interest of the statistical psychologist, it is hardly necessary 
to affirm, lies in something altogether different from tbe purposes of the code. ( 2 ) Compare, e.g., p. 138. 



260 

extreme periods of school life, the figures offer but the rudest approxi- 
mation. 

In thus selecting a comparatively meagre sample of the total population, 
it has been necessary to make some allowance for limitations in scholarship, 
in social status, and in age, which inevitably characterise pupils in particular 
schools and particular school classes. The ordinary elementary schools 
chosen for the experiments represent, with certain exceptions, median schools 
for their borough. 1 To this end all the schools in the borough were first ranked 
in a rough order of merit according to the general level of the pupils' attain- 
ments. Merit was deduced principally from the performances of the children 
in the preliminary examination for junior county scholarships, and from the 
number of scholarships attained annually in the final examination. The 
schools placed in or near the middle of this series were selected as medians. 
To these typical schools were added four schools of an exceptional type, 
namely, the school in the poorest neighbourhood, the school in the most 
prosperous neighbourhood, a school in a moderately poor neighbourhood, 
and a school in a neighbourhood moderately well-to-do. The data obtained 
from these and other sources were ultimately weighted, upon the principle 
described in discussing the Binet-Simon tests, in proportion to their repre- 
sentative value. 

Within a circumscribed area special schools are few. They offer no such 
opportunity for systematic choice. I have, however, endeavoured to include 
special schools recruited from both the poorer and the better social classes. 

In calculating averages and standard deviations for normal children at 
the older years, I have admitted representatives of those transferred to Council 
Central schools and of scholarship winners at Council Secondary schools ; and 
have attempted to weight data from these sources in just proportion. For the 
ages of 1 1 — and upwards, therefore, the norms are somewhat higher than 
could be obtained in ordinary elementary schools alone, since these commonly 
surrender the best of their oldest pupils. Similarly, for the older defectives, 
I have striven to weight the figures derived respectively from junior schools 
and from schools for elder boys and girls, so that the composite result eventu- 
ally obtained should approximate to the true average for a random sample. 

2. PRACTICAL CAUTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS. 

A few practical suggestions and warnings may be added for those who 
wish to employ these or similar scales for special purposes in their schools. 

(i) Provisional Nature of the Scale. 

This is, I believe, the first attempt to construct a systematic set of 
scholastic tests and norms for English school children.* It follows that the 
results are only provisional. Their value is limited ; their accuracy low. 
If a child, hitherto deemed normal, deviates below the standard here tabu- 
lated as average for his age, the examiner will not too hastily conclude the 
child must therefore be backward. When the thermometer registers sixty 
degrees, and the pools are frozen, it is always possible that the instrument 

( J ) Owing to the fact that in the course of my previous survey many of the tests had been given in an 
earlier and unrevised form in the median schools of the borough then reviewed, it proved necessary to include, 
for some of the final tests, median schools from an adjacent borough. The special schools were also situated 
in the same two boroughs ; and comprised those to which the ordinary elementary schools in question 
commonly transferred their defective cases. 

( 2 ) Since this was written, Dr. Ballard has collected and published a large number of tests, both of edu- 
cational abilities and general intelligence, many of them tests of his own constructing, in his admirable 
volume on Mental Tests (Hodder and Stoughton, 1920). 



261 

may be at fault — particularly if it be the first manufacture of an apprentice 
hand. Already, in diagnoses based upon the Binet-Simon tests, we have 
seen the risks to which a too submissive loyalty is blind. And, in foreign 
schools, faith in a fallible test-scale, as in something beyond appeal, has 
greatly impaired the value which early efforts at educational measurement, 
cautiously accepted and critically appraised, might conceivably have pos- 
sessed. He, therefore, who applies these methods to some class or school, 
and thinks he has discovered a rnote, should first consider whether a beam 
may not lurk in the test. The eye of science, no less than the eye of the 
body, has its muscce volitantes — quivering flecks that seem to lodge upon the 
faces of our friends, but prove when re-examined to be mere illusory pro- 
jections of some little opacity in our own apparatus of vision. 

(ii) Practical Uses and Limitations. 

Nevertheless, pending the construction of some more valid scale, even 
the present compilation may have a practical as well as a theoretical use. 
Tests are time-savers. They cannot pretend to greater accuracy than the 
considered sentence of the observant and experienced teacher, judging his 
own old pupils. But observation is slow, and experience an affair of years. 
The young teacher who has not yet based his expectations on prolonged 
experience, the new teacher who has not yet had opportunity for protracted 
observation, may by means of such devices be helped swiftly to some pro- 
visional conclusion. To the verdicts even of the shrewdest judge the method 
may have something to contribute : for without such a method we possess 
in educational .measurement no personal equations — no formula measuring 
the estimate of one teacher against the estimate of a different. The lack is 
crucial. It is like the option of twenty francs or twenty marks when one 
is ignorant of the rate of exchange. 

Tests should provide a universal currency ; or at least some first 
approach to it. When the headmaster of one school says his pupil is " fair," 
and the headmaster of a second says his candidate is " excellent," the two 
reports, as they stand, are incommensurate. What is " fair " in Lewisham 
or Hampstead excels even " excellence " in Bermondsey or Bethnal Green. 
We have first to equate the teachers' standards before we can equate their 
reports. But if both use the same tests and quote the same terms — " with 
such a scale the child is so many years above or below the normal average " — 
then a valid comparison has already been instituted. And, for most puiposes, 
I believe, the tests will furnish a statement of general and specific school 
attainments probably more trustworthy and certainly more precise than could 
be got with the same expenditure of labour from unaided impressions and 
improvised examinations. To test the general level of an entire class, to 
reveal the teaching efficiency of a school as a whole, they are perhaps not 
wholly to be trusted. But for measuring the more extreme degrees of 
backwardness or advancement among individual children they may, I fancy, 
be of positive service. 

For norms obtained upon so limited a scale as the present, a wide margin 
should be allowed for error of measurement. Unless a child, or a group of 
children, differs from the stated averages by one year at the very least, little 
significance can be affixed to the divergence. If possible, when testing indi- 
viduals, a teacher should always examine the remainder of the age-group in 
the same school, or, at any rate, a sufficient normal sample. This holds with 
especial force for those accepting a scale worked out in a particular London 
district, and applying it either to schools in the provinces or to localities in 
London itself poorer or less poor than the district here surveyed. So great, 
indeed, are local differences in school attainments, whether due as in some 



262 

cases to differences in social and economic status, or as in others to differ- 
ences in teaching method, that a child's performances should never be 
judged except by comparison with others of his age who have had equal 
opportunities and an equal chance, alike at school and at home. 

(iii) Teachers' Own Scales. 

It follows that every teacher should prepare his own series of tests 
and his own scale of norms. He should, in any event, hesitate before adopt- 
ing, blindly and bodily, someone else's ready-made scheme. An instrument 
of his own forging, if framed upon scientific principles, will be far more 
suited to his peculiar requirements. Teachers are too modest. From time 
to time some external examiner introduces a new test. The teacher infers 
that the device enjoys some occult efficacy to which nothing of his own could 
ever aspire. He borrows the test. He may adopt and adapt it for purposes 
of teaching. The next time it is used in an examination, either by himself 
or by the originator, its whole significance is destroyed or changed ; to the 
child the task is now as stale and familiar as any class-room commonplace. 
Medical officers who examine cases of suspected deficiency find that such tests 
as those in the Binet-Simon series, once they have been popularised, become 
rapidly useless for their special ends. Abroad, the same fate has already 
overtaken tests of school attainments. If, therefore, any body of teachers 
or educational investigators are studying the value of a particular test-sheet, 
it is better, as a rule, that the questions contained in it should be left to the 
investigators themselves. They should not be applied, forthwith and in- 
discriminately, by any whose curiosity happens to be stirred. Those prosecut- 
ing the enquiry will welcome the co-operation of others who may be interested. 
But then, that the procedure may be correct in detail and comparable as a 
whole, the original investigators should be approached before, not after, the 
results are secured. 

If any wish to test the merits of the present series, I personally shall 
respond most gratefully either to criticisms, or to requests for minuter 
explanations. Our next efforts, I would urge, should be addressed primarily 
to two problems : first, to the perfection of the tests themselves, both by 
selecting additional questions and by improving the form of the questions 
already selected ; and, secondly, pending the construction of a better and 
more diversified series, to the standardisation of the measurements of age- 
averages and variability, by repeating the present sets, with all their imper- 
fections, upon a more ambitious scale. 

(iv) Application of Scales to Syllabuses. 

Indirectly and within limits, such a series as the present may prove 
helpful and suggestive in the compilation and criticism of syllabuses of class 
instruction. Too often, in place of a detailed formulation of aim, the class- 
syllabus contents itself with vague recommendations touching method alone. 
As an illustration, I may quote an extract from a scheme of work drawn 
up for a particular class in a particular school for mental defectives. 

" Arithmetic. — Analysis of numbers with the four rules up to 99. Stress to 
be laid on addition, subtraction, and multiplication, rather than on division. Special 
attention to subtraction ; method of decomposition to be used. Mental to precede 
written work ; exercises in the concrete to be fully used ; but care to be taken to 
lead up to an abstract idea of number and to guard against figures being used 
mechanically and unintelligently." 

The theoretical principles that animate such precepts are unexception- 
able ; they are rational, all too rational. But the precepts themselves dictate 



263 

almost exclusively points of practical method. They remind us of the 
reasoning of M. Tomes in L' Amour Medicin : " I think with Artemis. 
Whether he cures his patient or kills him is of no consequence, so long as 
his treatment follow the correct rule. A dead man is a man dead ; and 
we are sorry for him. But if rules are to be broken, who shall answer for the 
consequences ? " The old psychology ordained correct rules of method, 
rules deduced from the supposed nature of the human mind as such, and 
the supposed self -evidence of some universal ideal. If there chanced to be some 
particular mind so deeply defective as to be incapable of approaching that ideal, 
so much the worse for that particular mind ; everyone was sorry for it ; 
but it had to be sacrificed, not the rules, nor the ideal. The new psychology 
takes a humbler stand. It is concerned with individual minds, not with 
mind in general. It is content to define the limited powers of this child and 
of that, not the ultimate potentialities of children as such. It seeks to for- 
mulate aims proportioned to those limited powers, not the ideal aims of an 
ideal school in an ideal society. And, taking care to state precisely the end 
to be achieved, it will, for the present, leave the means to take care of them- 
selves. Of method, a region of research as yet all but unvisited and 
totally unexplored, the psychologist of to-day knows less than the teacher. 
And of rules of method the psychologist is tempted to say with another 
professor of medicine : " Each case must be a rule to itself." Method should 
be individualised, not universalised ; adaptable as clay, not rigid like a 
clamp ; evolved progressively from week to week, modified for this pupil, and 
reversed for that, not written down, once for all cases and occasions, in a 
book. 

Of the class for which the syllabus quoted was drawn up all but two 
failed, and will for ever fail, to form an " abstract idea of number." Two 
succeeded. Four at least found it easier to manipulate figures " mechani- 
cally " than to understand the " exercises in the concrete." Thus the 
dietary which was one child's meat left another child starved, and, had it 
been forced upon a third, would have poisoned its mind against the whole 
subject. Respecting manner of instruction and mode of approach, therefore, 
no rigid directions should be laid down. To generalise, to prescribe, and to 
dictate, to attempt to deduce at the beginning of the term, from a priori 
presumptions, an ideal procedure that is to be applied throughout the term, 
regardless of unforeseen developments in the future, regardless of individual 
idiosyncrasies from moment to moment, to the children in a mass — such a 
plan, even with the most homogeneous class of defectives, would be fatal, 
were it not futile. The one merit of such prescriptions is that almost in- 
evitably they are too vague to be injurious, too general to be restrictive. 

Method, then, may wisely be left to the class teacher to determine, who 
in his turn will leave it to be determined by the children's needs, to be un- 
folded from lesson to lesson by the progressive self -revelation of each indi- 
vidual mind. On the other hand, an exact enunciation of results to be looked 
for would be, not only possible, but helpful. To the class teacher it would 
be no small service, if the head master, after due consultation with his 
assistants and due examination of the class, formulated, in terms of tests 
and marks, the aim he considers should be kept in view : "in addition so 
many columns of such and such a character to be added in such and such 
a time with at most such and such a percentage of error " ; and so forth. 
His statement might announce the average he expected the class to achieve ; 
or it might specify the minimum beneath which even the meanest pupil 
should not fall ; or it might indicate both. It would not exact the same 
attainments from every one, as though each inherited the same capacity, 
and as though all, therefore, could make similar progress at the same flat rate. 



264 

What has been said of arithmetic observations might be applied to 
reading, and indeed to any subject measured by our tests. In reading, the 
class syllabus not infrequently imposes a preference for some special method 
— the "Phonic," the "Nellie Dale," the " Look-and-say," or what not; 
while the results to be attained by the method are passed over, unnoticed 
or ill defined. Here, once more, the norms may bring precision. 

With the mentally deficient the most successful plan is usually the policy 
of a limited objective ; and the tests may well aid in stating that objective, 
and in defining its limits. Indeed, throughout in the foregoing suggestions 
I have had chiefly in view the special (M.D.) class. But their application 
may doubtless be extended. In constructing the schemes of work for the 
backward they have certainly proved serviceable ; whether they are applic- 
able to syllabuses for normal classes, it is perhaps beyond my province to 
decide. But, even in the ordinary school, a trial would be worth the making. 
It is an axiom that the plan of instruction should be adapted to the age and 
ability of the children to be taught. Lessons and level should correspond. 
Take an ordinary London child of a given age — say nine and a half. What 
degree of accomplishments in reading, spelling, and arithmetic may we, 
with the greatest probability, presuppose ? What further amount may we seek 
fairly to have added by the end of the ensuing year ? Hints for the answer 
to such questions may be extracted in much detail from a perusal of the 
various scales. We may safely assume from them that already at the age 
specified he can spell such words as " towel " or " touch " ; we may hope 
that in a few months he will spell such words as " surface," " saucer," and 
"succeed " ; if we set him words like "conceited " or "occasion," he will 
probably, even after twelve months' drudgery, still blunder. Similarly, 
from the arithmetic scales we may discover what problems in money he can 
attack, and what type of bill or invoice he may be taught ; problems in the 
measurement of time, of equal complexity, will, for at least a year or two, 
remain beyond his grasp. 

With a child of average ability to aim at attainments well above the 
average will be usually unavailing and sometimes dangerous ; what are to 
be considered average attainments the tests and tables show. Similarly, 
with children of ability above or below the average, the aim should be 
correspondingly high or low ; and once more the tests will intimate in detail 
what a child who is backward by two years can barely do, and what a child 
who is two years ahead may be taught with profit. 

Arguments, however, founded upon this limited basis should be received 
with proper reserve. The problems have been selected upon statistical 
grounds, not from a priori deductions. The words proposed for the measure- 
ment of reading, spelling, and dictation were picked, not because they are 
the words that should specially be taught, but because they form appropriate 
or suggestive tests. The examples set in the arithmetic papers are published, 
not as model questions, but solely because they happened to have been 
answered by 50 per cent, of the children at the age specified. Whether these 
or other exercises are the best to teach at this age, whether these or other 
formulae should be used in framing examination papers, are distinct issues, 
to be decided only after a distinct research. 

(v) The Danger of the Average considered as a Norm. 

Equally, too, the standards of attainment are norms only in the statis- 
tical sense. They represent actual averages and actual medians, not ideals. 
If asked to point to an average child, the class teacher commonly selects 
one who suffers from no disabilities. He thinks of the normal child as one 



265 

who, without being obviously supernormal, is entirely free from abnormali- 
ties. But, in an environment so distant from perfection as that of a typical 
London borough, the average child has many disabilities, and the majority 
might be by a precisian dubbed abnormal, at least in the sense that they fall 
short of perfect normality. Hence, most teachers and educationists will, I 
suspect, view with a shock of surprise the low level of the norms now given. 
They should remember always that the norm, as here defined, is approxi- 
mately a median, that is, a mediocre measurement or performance which 
cuts the entire group into two halves numerically equal, those above average 
and those below. Hence, it approaches an unsatisfactory or inferior perform- 
ance as nearly as it approaches a satisfying or superior performance, neither 
more nor less, being itself but neutral and indifferent. Like the bare water- 
shed that divides the sterile slopes of the foggy north from the fertile terraces 
of the sunny south, it inclines of itself to a preponderance neither of brightness 
nor of dullness, but has an equal share of each. If a child or a school reaches 
merely the average here given, that in itself is little cause for gratification. In 
a good school or a good neighbourhood, it would be a reason for dismay. A 
norm such as this is not an ideal or standard to be aimed at ; it is the scantest 
minimum, short of which the verdict " below par," " definitely inferior," 
must be pronounced. 

In thus printing only median samples and average figures, there is, I am 
sensible, a lurking danger. A minimum wage, officially recognised, tends 
in its practical operation to become, or at least to limit, the maximum wage. 
So, too, in educational statistics : when nothing but averages are published, 
a risk arises lest all better performances tend to be depressed towards con- 
formity with those averages. The figures printed here, however, are put 
forward simply as a record of facts, not as the formulation of an aim — a 
guide, perhaps, but not a goal. To be completely useful, indeed, such a scale 
should comprise for every age, not only average achievements, but best and 
worst achievements, together with typical achievements at even intervals 
between these two limits. But the publication of further samples the narrow 
compass of this memorandum inexorably forbids. Standard deviations I 
have invariably given throughout ; and their unexpected size shows how 
artificial a thing is the list of averages against which they are set. If the 
reader desires some indication of a genuinely good performance, he may add 
the standard deviation to the average ; and take their sum as marking a 
figure which only the best 16 per cent, of a typical age-group reach or surpass : 
add twice the standard deviation to the average, and only 2*3 per cent, in a 
random sample will be found to pass the total. 1 



(vi) Specific Disabilities. 

The examiner should always discriminate between children who are 
backward in most subjects and children who are backward in one subject, 
or one limited group of subjects, alone. A child, for example, who suffers 
merely from a specialised disability in reading and spelling, such as so- 
called " word-blindness," is to be carefully distinguished from one who is 
in every respect mentally defective. 

( J ) For those unfamiliar with statistical nomenclature, the standard deviation may be denned as the 
average of the divergences of individual children (duly weighted by squaring) from the arithmetical average 
for their age-group. It indicates the limit between which approximately the middle two-thirds of that group 
will fall. For example, in the graded reading test sixty-four words are, on an average, read by boys of ten. 
The standard deviation is fourteen. Hence, about two-thirds of the boys of that age read more than fifty 
words and less than seventy-eight words. Unless, therefore, a boy of ten can read such words as " theory," 
"reputation," "philosopher," he cannot be considered a remarkably good reader. 



266 

As I have shown in memoranda previously published, 1 educational 
attainments depend largely upon capacities of two kinds : first, a common 
or general capacity, entering into every subject in different degrees, but best 
exhibited in those that need thought-processes of a higher order, such as the 
comprehension of reading-matter among young children, and, among older 
children, problem arithmetic and literary (or rather logical) composition ; 
secondly, specific capacities — such as arithmetical ability, linguistic ability, 
manual ability, and musical ability — entering only into a small group of 
subjects. A child who is deficient in the former will be backward in all 
subjects — most backward in those subjects most dependent upon this central 
capacity (such as the subjects first named), least backward in those subjects 
least dependent upon it (such as manual and musical subjects). A child 
who is deficient in one of the specific capacities alone will be backward in 
the limited group of implicated subjects, and in none but these. 

If the teacher compares the individual results, obtained from a group 
of boys of the same age and about the middle of their school career, with the 
different scholastic tests, he will have little difficulty in verifying for himself 
the joint operation of capacities of these two orders. To establish their 
existence scientifically, to disengage their several influences, statistical 
methods based upon the calculation of correlations (such as are illustrated 
in the memorandum cited) must be employed. The application of such 
methods through all classes and in all departments yields a further twin 
conclusion : namely, that the relative influence of the more general capacity 
is greater, first, in earlier years as contrasted with later ; and, secondly, 
(though perhaps less certainly) among girls as contrasted with boys. To 
procure from one and the same group of children clear statistical evidence 
of the interplay of both general and specific factors, it seems best to 
confine the experiment to boys about the level of standard V. With 
younger children, and particularly, it would appear, with younger girls, 
one can often demonstrate little but the existence of the general factor ; 
with older school children, and particularly with college students, little but 
specific talents or specialised interests. 

From this it should follow that in younger years — below the age of 
about ten — it must be peculiarly difficult to diagnose a special or localised 
disability, as it is undoubtedly difficult to discover special or localised talents. 
Specialisation is, during early .childhood, the exception rather than the rule. 
Young turtle, said Epicurus, is every kind of meat in one — fish, fowl, pork, 
venison ; but old turtle is just plain turtle. Similarly, the young child 
contains in fresh and dormant essence the germ of every faculty. Age alone 
betrays our idiosyncrasies. 

Like special abilities, then, special disabilities often fail to declare them- 
selves until a later age. Nevertheless, the teacher should always take into 
consideration their possible existence. Many young children committed to 
special schools for the mentally deficient prove afterwards to have been 
cases of specialised defect, especially defect in linguistic subjects, such as 
reading and spelling. To assist the diagnosis of such cases, a systematic 
comparison of test-results in the several subjects, each with each, should 
invariably be made ; it may be achieved most simply and most clearly by a 
chart, by plotting the results graphically in the form of what I have termed 
elsewhere a " psychograph." 2 I shall append to my discussion of the several 
tests case-studies, obtained by such means, and illustrative of special dis- 
abilities in the more important subjects of the curriculum. 

(*) See Distribution and Relations of Educational Abilities, p. 46 et seq., and earlier papers. 
( 2 ) See Distribution and Relations of Educational Abilities, Fig. 9, pp. 64-5. 



267 

(vii) The Analysis of the Psychological Causes of Backwardness. 1 

To diagnose the mere fact of backwardness in some particular subject, 
even to measure its amount, is still not sufficient. The teacher should also 
analyse within that subject those special aspects or elements of it in which 
the child is peculiarly weak. As a means to this, he may adopt one or other 
of the devices suggested already for analysing backwardness in non-scholastic 
abilities. 2 To compare performances in the specific processes entering, for 
example, into arithmetic, the results for each sum can be tabulated accord- 
ing to the scheme employed for comparing specific aptitudes revealed by 
the Binet-Simon tests. 

The most useful plan is that of cross-classifying the marks, by children 
and by tests, in a row-and-column table. The test-questions may be entered 
by number along the upper margin, and the names of the children, preferably 
in order of their general abilities, down the left-hand edge. A mark for each 
performance is then placed under the number of the test against the name 
of the child. The totals of the rows indicate relative performances of the 
children ; the totals of the columns, the relative difficulty of the tests for 
this particular group. If from extensive experiments it is known that for 
most children all the tests are equally hard, or that for most children the order 
in which the several tests are entered is the order of increasing difficulty, then 
the special weaknesses of this particular class, and of particular individuals 
in this class, are patent at a glance. It may become manifest, for example, 
that subtraction is much weaker than multiplication, or that easy sums 
dealing with time are worked less accurately than harder sums in long- 
measure ; that "phonic" words are badly read, or that " look-and-say " 
words are badly spelt. 

Such a device may be applied to tests of almost every subject. There 
are other devices which are specially applicable to certain subjects alone. 
These I shall discuss under the appropriate headings. 

But the examiner should go further still and test the underlying psycho- 
logical capacities. His end is only reached when he has probed beneath the 
scholastic abilities and scholastic defects, and has, wherever possible, observed 
and measured the deeper and simpler functions, the elementary intellectual 
processes, that together make up the activities of school. He should remember 
always that linguistic ability and arithmetical ability, even the ability to 
read and to add, are themselves highly complex functions ; and that in mental 
life there are always more ways than one of learning to do one thing. 

It is here that mass teaching, with its employment of a uniform 
method and its insistence on uniform results, fails most conspicuously. 
Too many children, who, under the methods of class instruction generally 
in vogue in the ordinary elementary school, make little or no progress, are 
set down as mentally defective ; and are assumed, therefore, to be inherently 
incapable of learning the primary subjects of the elementary curriculum. 
Nor is this misconception confined to the ordinary school. In the special 
schools also, just as there are many struggling with reading and number 
who should be turned aside on to concrete and practical work, so there are 
not a few who, while rightly held to the formal subjects, are yet limited to 
the rudiments, capable of climbing yet kept at the foot, simply through 
failing to make headway by the time-honoured track. 

I am not, of course, contending that this is a universal characteristic, 
or even a common mark, of the current education in special or elementary 
schools ; nor have I so much in mind the inexperienced teacher as the 

f 1 ) For an analysis of the non -psychological causes of backwardness, I may refer to my previous 
memoranda, (Distribution of Abilities, pp. 37 et seq.) ( 2 ) See above, pp. 4 and 11. 



268 

ineffective system — that system of collective instruction which has long been 
traditional, but which is now being valiantly thrown over by the enterprise 
and efforts of masters and mistresses themselves. Many, indeed, will still 
argue that, since individual teaching and small classes cannot at present 
be provided for all, they should, therefore, when available, be devoted 
specially to those children among whom they are likely to be most remunera- 
tive — namely, to the supernormal. But the argument is fallacious. It may 
well be maintained that what the supernormal need is not individual teaching, 
but rather an ampler opportunity for individual work. 

Yet, even for the backward, individual teaching may be no less wasteful 
— it will, indeed, be more wasteful — than class teaching, unless it follow 
the appropriate method. And the appropriate method can only be discovered 
by an intensive study of the special needs of each particular child. Individual 
teaching, in short, presupposes individual observation. The teacher must rid 
himself of the assumption that for a given subject there is one sound method ; 
and test each method afresh upon each backward individual. The sound 
method for a child is that method by which he learns most successfully ; and 
what is sound for one child, or even for most children, may be unsound for 
the remainder. 

How, then, are we to discover the method best adapted for each indi* 
vidual ? In the first place, as I shall later explain in greater detail in dealing 
with the several subjects, special tests may reveal what in a given child are the 
mental capacities we may most successfully rely upon, and what we cannot 
entirely trust. Let me here emphasise that it is not sufficient to discover 
disabilities. We are too prone to look for backwardness and to emphasise 
deficiency. In the most backward and in the most defective we should still 
search also for unusual abilities and special gifts, gifts and abilities that 
may compensate for defects, that may offer help to appropriate training, 
and hold out hope for a successful development. As it is, such gifts in the 
less favoured child are left too often to waste, since, being neither sought 
for nor suspected, his special talents pass unnoticed. 

" The jewel that we find we stoop and take it 
Because we find it ; but what we do not see 
We tread upon, and never think of it." 

For the rest, the teacher may well adopt the plan pursued, often half un- 
consciously, by his most successful colleagues, the plan which may be termed 
experimental teaching. Essentially it consists of individual instruction 
carried out by constantly varied devices and by widely diversified methods ; 
but it is to be accompanied always by a close observation of the child's 
spontaneous method of attack, and by a detailed study of the ways in which 
the child can, does, and will by preference follow in learning a given piece 
of work ; and it is to be succeeded always by an intensive training in the 
most defective operations by means of the least defective mental channels. 

(viii) The Need of Permanent Records for Each Child. 

Last of all, let me urge, not only the need of periodic testing whether by 
the same teacher or by successive teachers, but also the preservation of the 
records, and their transference from one teacher to another as the child is 
moved from class to class. Too often the personal knowledge gleaned by his 
first teacher, through individual attention, through daily study and a year's 
experience, is lost when the child is promoted to a new class or leaves for a 
new school ; and the discoveries have to be made all over again. Rather the 
old records should become the basis of new observations ; and, as the child 
develops, as he passes from standard to standard, from department to 



269 

department, from school to school, and, finally, from school to his ultimate 
vocation, his dossier should go with him, and form the basis of the advice 
and guidance offered him in selecting his appropriate employment. 1 

3. INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE SEVERAL TESTS. 

The tests which it has been possible to print below are a selection only. 
They are not intended, as they stand, to form a complete or closed system 
for scholastic examinations. Rather they have been chosen as samples or 
illustrations of the most important types of test and test-procedure. I have, 
for example, given but one standardised passage for continuous reading, 
behoving that other passages, suited to younger or duller children, can 
readily be standardised in the same way by the teacher for himself. Nor, 
as a rule, will the practical examiner attempt to apply every type of test 
to each given case. For quick, preliminary estimates the graded reading 
test (Test 1) and the mental arithmetic test (Test 8, abbreviated) will be 
sufficient in oral interviews ; and the spelling test (Test 6) and the written 
arithmetic test (Tests 9 and 10) will be sufficient in written examinations. 
But additional tests may be needed in making a more intensive study of 
the difficult or doubtful cases revealed by this cruder survey. 

Detailed instructions follow for the successive tests. For convenience 
in practical use, however, the test-materials and tables of norms are bound 
together in an appendix at the close. 

(i) READING. 

Reading may be tested for at least four different qualities : for mechani- 
cal accuracy, for fluency or speed, for expression, and for comprehension. 

As customarily regarded by the teacher, reading means reading aloud ; 
and it is upon the third of the above qualities — expressiveness — that attention 
is principally focussed. Reading in the classroom has been usually, and often 
still remains, an " elocutionary display." Fluency and mechanical accuracy, 
it is true, are both of them pre-conditions of expressiveness ; and expressive- 
ness itself very largely is a sign and pledge of comprehension. He who reads 
the wrong words, or reads the right words only after hesitation and without 
understanding, cannot soar to an eloquent delivery ; but apt modulation 
and appropriate emphasis argue an intelligent grasp. Nevertheless, even so 
considered, expressiveness affords a measure, but indirect and dim, of the 
most important aspects of reading through the least important ; and, as 
usually assessed in school, its worth is further prejudiced by the inveterate 
practice of testing in rotation different children upon successive passages, 
and so intercepting them, according as the child's turn falls first or last, in 
different stages of preparation and rehearsal. 

The essential purpose of reading is to decipher the knowledge, thoughts, 
and feelings of another mind. It is primarily a matter of interpretation. 
Comprehension is thus, with older children, by far the most noteworthy 
element to test, as it is by far the most ignored. But the younger child is 
in reading preoccupied chiefly with the mechanical components, with the 
correct and rapid association of the "sound " 2 of the word with its visible 
symbol in print. Under present teaching methods, perhaps under all teach- 

( x ) Here I dismiss the wide subject of vocational psychology very summarily, since I have recently set 
out the above proposals more fully in my chapter on " Vocational Diagnosis in Industry and at School," in 
B. Muscio's Industrial Administration ; see esp. pp. 108 et seq. 

( 2 ) Strictly speaking, for the child it is usually the movements of utterance, actual or imagined, that 
are recalled. Intelligibly enough, teachers speak of this as the " sound " of the word. But much faulty 
method ensues from confounding a kinesthetic or motor image with an auditory. 



270 

ing methods, the further association of visible sign with meaning — an indirect 
association springing from the joint association of both with "sound" — 
becomes automatic only at a stage comparatively advanced. Among younger 
children of elementary schools, therefore, and among all backward and 
borderline cases, it is the mechanical aspect of the reading process — uttering 
a certain sound on seeing a certain sign in print — that in general calls for 
testing. 

Tests in reading may be usefully classified in various ways according 
to procedure. They may, in the first place, be either group tests or indi- 
vidual tests. If the children are to read silently, they may conveniently 
be tested simultaneously and in class. If they are to read aloud, each 
must be tested singly, privately, and in succession. In tests of reading the 
predilection of American investigators is for the silent or group procedure ; 
and, certainly for learning, silent reading is a peculiarly useful, as it is a pecu- 
liarly neglected, means of daily exercise. The disregard of silent practice is 
exposed in almost every type of reading test. In oral tests the child taught 
by purely oral practice is habitually watchful, not for meaning, but for words 
of whose pronunciation he is uncertain. In silent tests, the incipient move- 
ments of his Ifps while he is reading, and his sudden oblivion of the context 
when he is asked to recite the substance, betray an attention concentrated 
upon articulating sounds and upon that alone. For periodic examinations, 
however, as distinct from daily practice, silent reading is of relatively trifling 
worth. Much of the information conveyed by the modulation and inflexion 
of the child's voice — by the tone, the timbre, the rise and fall, the intelligent 
emphasis, and sympathetic note, all that expresses, not reading capacity 
only, but power of mind and quality of temperament — is of necessity 
sacrificed. Even for the measurement of reading capacity itself (as the 
figures from my comparative experiments at Liverpool x show) silent 
reading, with all but the oldest and brightest children, elicits results neither 
self-consistent nor secure. Indeed, for testing mechanical accuracy and 
mechanical speed, as distinct from speed and accuracy in seizing the 
thought, reading aloud and alone is all but inevitable. 

There is a further classification. The matter read may be either con- 
tinuous or discontinuous. In the second case, the test sheet contains a fist 
of disconnected words : it provides what may be termed a vocabulary test. 
In the former case, the test-sheet usually consists of a connected passage 
of prose. Lastly, in degree of difficulty, either kind of test may be uniform 
or graded, according as the words throughout are equally easy, or become 
progressively harder. 

(a) Graded Vocabulary Test (Accuracy). 

[Test 1.] 

In principle, mechanical accuracy could be measured by a simple vocabu- 
lary test upon the following plan. Find the hardest word the child can read 
correctly ; by implication he is presumed able to read all the words that 
are easier than this word ; the total number of words that, actually or 
by implication, he thus appears able to read, forms, when expressed as a 
proportion or percentage of the total number of words in the whole English 
language, a convenient measure for his accuracy in reading. For a practical 
test we cannot toil through the whole of Webster's dictionary. We must, as 
a dealer would in sampling corn, restrict ourselves to specimens culled from 
various fields. The list on pages 340 and 341 contains one hundred words which 
should be read by the average child before the age of fourteen, that is, before 

(*) See Journ. Exp. Peel. doc. cit. sup.), "Experimental Tests of General Intelligence." 



271 

leaving the ordinary elementary school. The words are arranged in average 
order of increasing difficulty. The child, therefore, is to read each word in 
succession until he can read no more. The number of words correctly read 
measures his reading ability, and may be taken as expressing the ratio of 
words he can now read to those he should be able to read at the end of his 
school life. With the brighter, older child this ratio may well exceed 100 per 
cent. Ten additional words are, therefore, appended for a hypothetical age- 
level beyond fourteen, making 110 words in all. 

The words are printed in a type which conforms, or nearly conforms, to 
the requirements of the British Association Committee on School Reading- 
Books. 1 To each age, from four to fourteen, ten words are assigned. These 
were eventually selected as words which are read by approximately one-half 
— between 40 and 60 per cent. — of the age-group specified. 2 By virtue of 
this arrangement a child so tested can at once be awarded a mental age for 
reading. Of the children aged between ten and eleven, for example, about 
one-half can read the ten words from " economy " to " atmosphere." At 
ten and a half, therefore, the average child reads half of these ten, and by 
implication the sixty easier words preceding them, sixty-five words in all. 
Consequently, a score of sixty words indicates a mental age for reading at 
ten ; seventy, one of eleven ; and so on, according to the formula : — 

Reading Age = 14 H 1 Years. 

From the age thus calculated the child's backwardness in reading can be 
immediately deduced in mental years. 

The words set out in the list below have been empirically selected, by 
several stages of reduction, from an assortment of over two thousand words, 
tried and retried with over two thousand children. These words, in turn, 
were selected principally from the children's own vocabulary as reconstructed 
from their original compositions. Regular or " phonic " words, and irregular 
or " look-and-say " words, were alike inserted. And, to test the powers of 
the child in attacking words entirely strange, there were added at almost 
every level a few words altogether outside the dialect of the ordinary 
reading-book. Still further to reduce the undue benefits of chance familiarity, 
inflected word-forms — principally derivatives in " -ed " and " -ing " and 
" -ly " — were freely interspersed. 

The reading ages of four and five pretend to little more than a conven- 
tional significance, since at this period a child may not have received even his 
first lesson in reading. With pupils of such an age or stage, therefore, it will 
be wiser simply to declare, as is so often done with children of a low grade 
or from a special school, that they can read so many two- or three-letter 
words ; and for this purpose the test to be described later will yield state- 
ments more detailed and more precise. 

Even where ability is unknown and undetermined, it is still, of course, 
superfluous to ply the child with each of the one hundred and ten words. It 
will be sufficient to give him the first word in each line or age-group until 
he fails or falters ; and then to test him with all the words in the preceding 
group and with those that follow until he fails outright with about ten con- 

(*) British Association Annual Report, Dundee, 1912, pp. 295-318, " Report on the Influence of School 
Books upon Eyesight." 

( 2 ) This method of numbering the age-assignments follows that suggested for the reasoning tests on 
page 238, not that of Binet. Xhe mental ages as calculated above, however, are entirely comparable. A 
child who reads sixty-eight words obtains a mental age of 10'8, whether we term the words from the sixty-first 
to the seventieth XL-year words (according to Binet's nomenclature, because when the child reads them all 
he scores an age of eleven) or 10-year words (as here, because they are crucial for children aged ten last 
birthday) 



272 

secutive words. Certain individuals fail erratically and succeed sporadically. 
With them wide-range testing is essential. In such a case, after the child 
has failed with a consecutive ten, time and tedium are saved, if the examiner 
then asks him to pick out any other word he knows and directs his attention 
along the remaining lines by pointing one by one to the rest of the words. 

Results obtained with this test are to be found in Table XXXIX. Aver- 
ages and standard deviations for each age are given, separately for children of 
either sex in the case of ordinary elementary schools, and for both sexes 
combined in the case of the special (M.D.) schools. Among normal children 
an unmistakable sex-difference is to be observed. Indeed, as is now generally 
recognised, girls outstrip boys not only (as here) in accuracy of reading, but 
also in every aspect of that subject — in fluency, in comprehension, and in 
expressiveness. In the present investigation, since the results have been 
procured from boys and girls segregated from the age of seven in two distinct 
departments, the sex-divergence during the senior ages is even wider than 
that remarked in my previous enquiries at Liverpool, where the results 
were obtained from mixed departments. 1 The difference is greatest among 
children living in better social circumstances ; and is, as a rule, com- 
paratively small among the less fortunate. In the former case, the sedentary 
life and literary occupations of the girls allow them to make the most of 
books, newspapers, adult conversation, and the other means of intellectual 
culture available in their homes ; while domestic duties and unhealthy 
conditions seem alike to tell most heavily upon the frailer sex, in the latter. 
Social differences are thus quite as marked as sex differences. Between 
schools in better neighbourhoods and schools in poorer neighbourhoods the 
difference in reading (as stated in my previous memoranda) may amount, 
especially among the girls, to as much as the equivalent of a mental year. 

From boys, therefore, and from poorer children of either sex, a mental 
age in reading, calculated as above, may be accepted at a level lower than 
would be accepted from girls, or from children from good homes, before 
deficiency in this subject is inferred. For strict exactitude separate age- 
norms should be employed for the two sexes, and perhaps should be re- 
calculated for different social classes. 

Between the average for normals and for defectives there is a well- 
marked interval. Reading, indeed, is the subject in which children of London 
special schools are currently reputed to be most backward. Nevertheless, 
as I have already hinted, the diagnostic value of reading tests, at any rate 
in their more mechanical form, is partly illusory, and largely overrated. 

(b) Letters and Figures. 

[Test 2.] 

For general purposes the foregoing test of reading seems by far the 
simplest and most handy of those I have to offer. Yet for measuring the 
meagre attainments of the lowest grades — testing, for example, the reading 
capacity of young borderline defectives — it is by no means sufficiently 
refined. The ten or twenty words assigned in it arbitrarily to ages three and 
four may be for such children all too hard, or, if not too hard, still too few in 
number and too narrow in range, to provide effective differentiation. For 
such cases the three following tests are designed. 

With the lowest grades of all it is necessary to test first and upon a proper 
system their knowledge of the letters of the alphabet and of the Arabic 
numerals. The test-sheet printed in regulation type on page 342 may be 

(') Joum. Exp. Fed., 1911. I.. 2. "Experimental Tests of Intelligence," p. 111. Cf. also ibid., I.. 5, 
" Mental Differences between the Sexes," p. 370. 



273 

used for this purpose. With older and brighter children it is at times desirable 
to try their power with figures and fractions of a more difficult order. Speci- 
mens of these are accordingly included. 

In reading letters and figures a child's performance varies so much 
according to the time at which he entered, and the period for which he has 
attended, the infants' department or the special school, that it is useless to 
attempt a table of norms. Very roughly, it appears that 90 per cent, of the 
letters and simpler figures are correctly read by the average normal at the age 
of 6-0, and by the average defective at 9-0. The former should learn them 
after six to nine months' teaching in the ordinary elementary school ; the 
latter after twelve to eighteen months in the special school. 

(c) Two- and Three-Letter Monosyllables. 

Speed (with Normals) and Accuracy (with Defectives). 

[Test 3.] 

While accuracy is best tested with graded material, speed is best tested 
with material that is throughout, as nearly may be, uniform in difficulty, and 
lies, from beginning to end, well within the capacity of the child whose speed 
is to be measured. For reading, such material is provided by Test 3. The 
same test-sheet may also be used to measure mechanical accuracy in those 
low grade cases who have mastered the letters of the alphabet but are still 
wrestling with the simplest words. This, indeed, was my original design in 
framing the present test. 

In the progress books kept by teachers, and upon the record cards filled in 
by medical officers, the reading attainments of younger defectives are not 
infrequently conveyed by the remark that the child knows " most two-letter 
words " or " a few three-letter words." This is a very convenient indexin such 
cases. Ambiguity, however, may arise when those who refer to such records 
are left in ignorance as to what particular words were used in the test, and 
what particular number is implied by " few " or " most." If the words 
used by the examiner are always the same, if the number correctly read is 
stated explicitly in figures, and if the words known by the child are assumed 
to be the easiest in the list, then the statement becomes exact. 

By systematically combining, in groups of two and three, all the letters 
of the alphabet, and rejecting all unpronounceable collocations and all 
" nonsense syllables," we readily obtain a complete and exhaustive inventory 
of the two- and three-letter words in the English language. From a test 
designed for defectives we plainly must expurgate all obsolete words (as "ye," 
"thy," "wot," "eke"), all unfamiliar proper names (as "Cid," "Usk"), 
and all interjections (as "oh," "ho," "ah," "ha," " lo," "tut"). 
Words that differ very much for different individuals in their comparative 
familiarity, notably the more common personal names (" Tom," " Pat," 
" Eva "), should, even with normal children, likewise be discarded. The 
remaining words may be arranged (apart from a few undesirable juxtapositions) 
in the order of difficulty as determined by experiments upon defective and 
younger normal children. 

A list of words, thus selected and thus arranged, is given on pages 344 and 
345. In an English dictionary there are about five hundred words of this length, 
thirty-three being two-letter words, the remainder three-letter words. I have 
retained one hundred and eighty of the latter and twenty of the former, two 
hundred in all. To ascertain the number of such words that the child can 
read, it is usually sufficient for him to work through the test from the begin- 
ning until he breaks down upon practically every word in a line. Since, 
T 



274 

however, such words differ but little in difficulty, the child should be asked 
if he can find any other words that he knows, and his eye should be guided 
along the next three or four lines. 

In testing accuracy of reading with material such as this, the measure- 
ment of ability will be the total number of words upon the sheet which the 
child can read. The figures on the right-hand margin of the test-sheet will 
be found to facilitate counting ; they indicate the total number of words 
in the foregoing portion. If thought desirable (and perhaps it always is 
desirable with children whose reading vocabulary is extremely small), the 
number of two-letter words correctly read can be stated separately. The 
two measures, for two -letter words and for two- and three-letter words, when 
thus obtained, if multiplied by three or divided by five respectively, will 
roughly express the percentage which the child can read out of the entire 
number of such words. Thus, at the age of seven and a half a borderline 
child can read the first thirty words on the sheet, twenty-two of which are 
two-letter words. He can, therefore, read about 66 per cent. (3 x 22) of all 
two-letter words in the language, and under 2 per cent. ({30 — 22} ~- 5) of all 
words of three letters or less (Table XL.). 

In this way we can measure the beginner's reading ability by its extent 
or range. Its speed or fluency can be measured with the same test-material 
by observing the time required to read a given amount, or the amount read 
in a given time. Following Dr. Ballard's procedure, before the child begins 
the test I expressly instruct him to read as rapidly as possible ; and then 
record the number of words correctly read in sixty seconds. 1 Thus obtained, 
the results should be closely comparable with those gathered upon an ex- 
tensive scale by Dr. Ballard and his co-workers. 2 

In practice, both speed and range can be measured during a single 
experiment. After the examiner has noted the number of words correctly 
read within the first minute the child is simply required to continue, as 
described above, until he utterly fails. 

Detailed results obtained with this material will be found, for accuracy 
of reading, in Table XL., and, for speed of reading, in Table XLI. As 
regards speed, it is convenient to observe that the average child of ten 

f 1 ) It is wise, I find, to remind the investigating teacher that a minute cannot be exactly measured by 
observing a minute-hand. Hence, a watch which, like most women's watches, is unsupplied with a second- 
hand, is useless for this test. Indeed, both for this and for the preceding test a stop-watch or stop-clock, 
if obtainable, should be employed. 

A period so short as a minute leaves room for a relatively wide margin of error. But the eye-movements 
required to fixate each successive word are so contrary to normal action that, when maximum speed is sustained 
for a longer period, this test is apt to induce excessive ocular fatigue. Hence, a brief test remains preferable. 

( 2 ) In elaborating this form of the test my debt to Dr. Ballard's pioneer investigations will be obvious 
to all who are conversant (as every teacher should be) with his pregnant articies. My test-sheet, originally 
compiled for a somewhat dissimilar purpose — to study, namely, the range of defectives in reading, 
rather than the speed of normals — appears to differ from Dr. Ballard's in the following respects : Four-letter 
monosyllables (as "rock"), and dissyllables, whether of three or four letters (as "any," "upon"), 
are alike excluded ; the words are graded, not by length — all two-letter words preceding all three letter 
words, and all three-letter preceding all four-letter words — but in order of average difficulty for de- 
fectives regardless of length (thus in my series " eat " and " dog " precede " van " on the ground of greater 
ease ; in Dr. Ballard's they follow it) : an endeavour has been made to exhaust all the easier three-letter 
words before having recourse to harder, such as " act " or " fur." For completeness I have given averages 
for every year including those from nine to thirteen ; but I entirely agree that for such higher levels the 
test, particularly with the material thus still further simplified, is ill adapted. My material, it will be seen, 
embraces far less variety : it is, therefore, less suited for older normals. On the other hand, for young or 
low-grade special school children, it seems more appropriate. Owing, it may be. to the elimination o - post- 
ponement of more difficult words, my examinees show a slightly higher average speed. Here, however, it 
should be observed that Dr. Ballard's results were gathered from over twenty thousand children, and have, 
therefore, a title to far greater veracity. 

The reader will find the test-sheet and norms for Dr. Ballard's test, together with a suggestive discussion 
of the significance of speed-tests in reading with discrete material, in Child Study, 1909, Vol. IX., No. 1, p. 1. 



275 

reads at the rate of about a hundred monosyllables per minute. For 
accuracy I give no age-norms derived from normals, since by ordinary children 
simple two- and three-letter words are practically all learnt within a few 
weeks. Indeed, for normals the gradation in difficulty is almost too gentle 
to be perceived. For them the test-material is virtually of the uniform or 
ungraded type ; and, therefore, well fitted for testing speed. 

In speed the odd divergence between the two sexes, first noticed by 
Romanes with continuous prose, is evident at almost every age. That sex 
whose tongue is reputed the more fluent in daily speech yields also the more 
facile readers. The defectives, it would seem, are backward in speed even 
more than in accuracy. 

(d) Graded Directions Test (Comprehension). 

[Test 4.] 

This monosyllabic medley provides a simple test for speed and accuracy ; 
it offers nothing for comprehension. To be equally simple, a comprehension 
test is best framed upon the principle of a " directions " test. Here the 
criterion of intelligent reading is not power to reproduce from memory the 
substance of some fictitious story or some abstract argument, but ability to 
carry out from a printed order some concrete practical instruction. 

A series of such directions are given on pages 346 to 349. Each order 
should be typewritten or printed upon a separate card. A card is handed to 
the child with an explanation such as the following : " Read what is on this 
card ; and then do what it says. You need not read it aloud to me ; but 
you must do what it tells you." If, as often happens from the novelty of 
the demand or from the shyness of the child, no response is made, the examiner 
may add some further word of encouragement : " The card contains a little 
message like a postcard or letter ; it asks you to do something for me." With 
the first test card it may even be necessary to suggest that the direction be read 
aloud, and to enquire in detail : " Where is the pen ? " " What are you to 
do with it ? " Only then will a subdued examinee summon heart to touch 
an article on the examiner's desk in the examiner's presence and offer it to 
the examiner in person. In fact, throughout the series, in dealing with very 
young or very backward children, it may often prove expedient not to 
insist too stringently that the reading be silent, but freely to embolden the 
child to make some movement of response without expressly intimating 
what the response should be. 

In these early stages of learning to read, doing is the best test of under- 
standing. At a later stage, saying may supersede doing ; for a verbal reply 
to a problem consumes less time than the actual execution of an order, 
especially when, as on this higher footing, the injunction must of necessity 
be somewhat complicated. The test may then approximate to the " instruc- 
tions " test and to the "reasoning" or " syllogistic problem " tests given 
above for measuring intelligence. 1 

An interesting modification of this test may be constructed by using 
pictures for the response. This form is convenient for problems intermediate 
in difficulty between those requiring a practical response and those requiring 
a verbal response. Showing the child an illustration of the well-known 
fable, the examiner says : " Read this little story to yourself." (The 
story runs : " Once a hunter caught a lion in a net ; but a mouse nibbled 
the ropes, and set the lion free.") " Now show me in the picture who was 
caught in a net ? . . . Who caught him ? . . . Who set him free ? " For 
a class test, the teacher who is a skilful draughtsman may draw and 

(*) See pp. 231 and 239 et seq. 



276 

hectograph the picture, with the questions or instructions, suitably modified, 
written beneath. The instructions may now run : " Find in the picture who 
set the lion free, and draw a ring around him " ; or, with other pictures, 
mutilated as in Binet's-" missing features " test, the child may be instructed 
still in silence by the printed matter, to " put a long tail on the mouse . . ." ; 
". . . an eye in the lion's head . . ." ; "a feather in the man's cap. . . ." 
With series of problems graded in difficulty, this pictorial form of the instruc- 
tions test will prove extremely helpful to the class teacher in examining 
young children ; for the purposes of an external examiner, however, it is, 
perhaps, too much influenced by previous training in kindred tasks. For 
this reason, and in view of the cost and difficulty of reproducing the requisite 
pictures, I give no samples of the test in this form ; but leave it rather to the 
ingenuity of the inventive teacher. 

At the most advanced stages of all, whatever type of response be required, 
a test of this general character, particularly if composed of a discontinuous 
series of tasks, is converted almost inevitably from a specific test of reading 
capacity into a general test of intelligence. In the relevant literature, in- 
struction tests and problem tests alike appear, now in pedagogical articles as 
tests of reading, now in psychological manuals as tests of intelligence. In 
their more developed forms both tests were designed specifically for the 
latter purpose ; for the latter purpose they are by nature more appropriate ; 
and, accordingly, for the latter purpose they should, at least when of a 
more complex character, be, on the whole, reserved. 

For an individual examination in intelligent reading, then, a " direc- 
tions test " seems suited only to those who have just mastered the elemen- 
tary mechanics of that process. For children varying in mental age from 
about 6-0 to 8-0, for children at the stage of standard I. — a standard which 
has perhaps the widest range of all — and, above all, for older borderline 
defectives, such as are examined for possible retransference to an ordinary 
elementary school, this type of test is eminently adapted. In compiling the 
test-material, therefore, I have included as many as five questions for ages 
6 — and 7 — , and one only for each of the remaining ages. Owing to the time 
needed to apply such tests, the latter have been but roughly standardised 
upon small groups : they will be required only for rare and special cases — 
for example, an older backward child who shows an unexpected facility in 
this particular test. A larger series of harder " directions " for higher levels 
will be found on page 231, to be used as a written, group test of intelligence, 
rather than as an oral, individual test of reading. The power of intelligent 
reading, among children who are well advanced, is to be tested, not with a 
disjointed instructions -test, but rather with a single connected passage of 
prose, such as is supplied by the test which follows. 

Averages, standard deviations, and borderline scores are given in 
Table XLII. The figures for older normal children are inserted merely for 
comparison with those obtained at the same ages from the defectives. The 
test is not intended for use with normal children above the age of nine. 
Among normals, the greater emotional shyness of the girls and the greater 
practical readiness of the boys tend at certain ages to obliterate, and even 
to reverse, the direction of the sex-difference elsewhere observed in reading 
tests. In this test defectives are peculiarly backward ; and their rate of 
progress, as compared with that shown by normals, is singularly slow. The 
defectives advance at the rate of about one question per year. The first 
half-dozen questions, which require five years for the average defective to 
master, are accomplished in little over a year by the normals. For backward 
and defective children, therefore, the number of test-questions needful to 
determine their mental level is, in this instance, larger than would be 



277 

necessary to determine the mental level of the ordinary children. But for 
the same reason the test, when applied to such borderline cases, has a 
high discriminating power. 

(e) Continuous Prose Test (Speed, Accuracy, Comprehension). 

[Test 5.] 

The foregoing tests have been concerned with reading either at its 
simpler levels, or in its most mechanical aspect — the ability to pronounce 
isolated words quickly and correctly on seeing their printed symbols. At 
higher stages, however, the other aspects of the reading process are at least 
equal in importance. Preferably for judging fluency, inevitably for judging 
expressiveness and comprehension, 1 the material to be read by older and 
abler children must be continuous ; it should form a single consecutive 
passage of intelligible prose. For these three aspects, therefore, the extract 
printed on page 351 has been used in the higher classes of the ordinary school. 
It may also be used to test the fourth aspect, mechanical accuracy, in reading 
connected matter as opposed to isolated words. 

The paragraph is taken, with trifling simplifications, 2 from Ruskin's 
King of the Golden River, a tale which sometimes figures in reading-books 
for intermediate standards. The chosen portion advances progressively in 
difficulty both as regards words and as regards thought ; and is thus adapted 
to testing, both in accuracy and in understanding, a fairly broad range of 
ability. Further, the quoted question, the descriptive close, and the 
variety of emotions delineated, give added play for expressive utterance. 3 

The results obtained with this test are presented in Tables XLIII. to 
XLV. The figures show the averages and standard deviations found, in each 
age and sex among the children of ordinary elementary schools, for fluency, 
for accuracy, and for comprehension. With a continuous passage these four 
aspects of the reading process may be assessed by the following means. 

Fluency is measured most simply, as before, in terms of speed ; and, 
indeed, for intermediate as for lower levels of ability, speed of reading forms a 
simple and convenient index of attainment. But among older children, the 
fast reader is often a careless gabbler ; the more intelligent and more expressive 
take their time. The rate should be timed unobtrusively, otherwise the child 
may infer that he is expected to read at maximum velocity. Whenever 
owing to the difficulty of some word, the child hesitates, a pause of five 
seconds is allowed ; the child is then assisted, and the need for prompting 
reckoned an error. In the table the figures given for speed are the number 
of seconds required to read the whole excerpt of 193 words or 259 syllables. 
Allowing for the unusual difficulty of the last few lines, the figures given, 
when divided by two, may be taken as approximately indicating the time 
required to read a hundred words. 

Accuracy and inaccuracy are indicated by the total number of mistakes 
made in reading the passage. Slips rectified by the child spontaneously do 

( x ) A discontinuous vocabulary test (see pp. 229 and 230) may be used for testing comprehension of 
isolated words. But such a test is a test of knowledge rather than of reading. When we say that a child 
can read such words as "metaphysical" or "philanthropic." we do not usually imply that he is therefore 
acquainted with their meaning. 

( 2 ) Chiefly the substitution of English names, Tom and William, for German, Hans and Schwartz. 

( 3 ) It is impossible in any but prose specially manufactured to obtain a very wide range of difficulty. 
Accordingly, I have artificially constructed a graded passage, increasing in difficulty from sentences of the 
simplest monosyllables to sentences beyond the scope of all but the brightest readers of thirteen. The piece 
was prepared for a co-operative research upon errors in reading ; and has been published with this object 
by the Child Study Society (see Child Study, 1915, Vol. VIII., No. 5, p. 93). For general use as a rapid test, 
however, it is far too lengthy ; nor does it afford much scope for comprehension. Norms for accuracy in 
this test will, I hope, shortly be published in that Society's journal. 



278 

not count as faults. To avoid prolonging the time of reading, the teacher 
should never interpose to correct an error, except when the reader is embar- 
rassed or delayed by his own vague consciousness of an unlocated blunder. 
Unless the examiner has the passage by heart, it is advisable to follow the 
child, word by word, upon a second sheet ; otherwise, errors that do not 
clash with the gist of the passage — for example, the substitution of " green " 
for " grey " in line 16, the omission of " again " in line 9 or in line 11 and 
of " for " in line 14 — may pass unnoted. 

Expressiveness could be permanently standardised by selecting median 
readers, and causing them to read the passage aloud before a dictaphone. 
This I have attempted for every age. I have not, however, ventured to 
re-mark complete age-groups by means of the age-scale so obtained ; and 
consequently for expressiveness no averages or standard deviations are here 
tabulated. 

Comprehension of a continuous prose passage may be measured by 
various methods. Simplest and commonest is that of reproduction. The 
child is required to relate viva voce, or to set down in writing from memory, 
the substance of the passage just read. His account may then be assessed 
either by reckoning the number of unit ideas correctly reproduced — the 
procedure adopted by Binet and Simon (tests 36 and 44 of their scale) ; or, 
more simply, by crossing out erroneous words and phrases, and counting the 
total number of written words remaining. However the exercise be marked, 
the procedure in itself is not very exact ; and, in any case, affords a test of 
memory rather than of comprehension. One child may precipitate, as it 
were, whole clauses, word for word, without ever having absorbed a particle 
of theif^Kieaning. Another may omit an entire block of sentences, not because 
he has reaa^lwekjadthout grasping them, but because, through the relative 
unimportance of the contents, through the distraction of writing and spelling, 
or, it may be, through some inexplicable freak of recollection, he fails for the 
moment to recall a paragraph that he fully comprehends. 

A child's power to extract the meaning from what he reads does not 
depend exclusively upon an intellectual act, upon a cold capacity for under- 
standing the words and statements presented to him in print. Emotional, 
imaginative, and even moral propensities equally act their part. I have 
already suggested 1 that many of the mistakes made by a child in reading 
have an emotional rather than an intellectual origin ; and that they are 
often wrongly interpreted by teachers, who, according to the prevalent 
tradition, treat education as a purely intellectual process ; that they are, 
in fact, parallel to those lapses of speech and memory, the slips of the 
pen, and the trippings of the tongue, which in adults have been shown by 
psycho-analysis to be so richly symptomatic of the profounder secrets of the 
individual's mental attitude. 

To verify this view when the matter read by the class is reproduced by 
each child independently, would be difficult except for the expert analyst. 
But the processes at work may be clearly demonstrated by a simple device 
which magnifies the general tendencies like a microscopic lens. Every 
teacher is familiar with the game of " gossip," which under various names 
and in various forms has been exploited in infant schools and kindergartens. 
Upon this game an instructive experiment can be modelled. One child alone 
reads the story in the printed original. That child's version is handed to the 
second child to read and reproduce. The second child's version is handed 
to the third ; and so on, in series, until the last child writes out a story 
which has passed progressively through the minds of every member of 
the class. If the class is animated by a fairly uniform spirit of literary 

(*) Child Study, loc. cit.. p. 93. 



279 

composition, little by little the divergence between the printed original and the 
successive reproductions widens ; until at length the final version, thus dis- 
torted and transformed by a cumulative sum of tiny modifications, may 
eventually emerge unrecognisable. If, on the contrary, the class be inspired 
with a fairly homogeneous ideal of scientific fidelity, the lack of change will 
be no less striking. 1 

Very easily in such class experiments, less clearly in the independent 
reproductions of the isolated child, two antithetical types or tendencies may 
be discerned. One type may be loosely termed " positivist," the other 
"imaginative." 2 The tendency of the first is to condense, to simplify, to 
generalise — to give a brief, bald precis of definitely recollected facts, un- 
altered and unadorned. The tendency of the second is to embellish and 
elaborate, to rationalise and vivify, to construct a concrete and interesting 
narrative, with every detail picturesque and every incident explained. 

I give below two extreme instances of these respective tendencies. The 
first version contains but fifty-seven words,'' Its errors are errors rather of 
fact than of falsification. The second contains 285 words — actually longer 
than the original ; it is, indeed, amid numerous experiments of this kind 
almost the sole example in which I ha^e not found the final reproduction to 
be much abridged. 3 The theme of/the story and most of the incidents 
have been radically altered. A smdy of the changes will immediately 
reveal the part played by emotiomal factors — by the children's own half- 
conscious wishes, interests, and ideals, or by their half-conscious adoption 
of what they take to be the wishes, interests, and ideals of their teacher 
and examiner.* 

( x ) This device, which may be termed that of "serial" or "cumulative reproduction," has been 
employed by E. J. Swift in a single experiment with a class of American adults for a different purpose, 
namely, to demonstrate the worthlessness of second-hand testimony (see Psychology and the Bay's Work, 
pp. 309-312). It is interesting to find that even with adults " at the eleveuth version the story may be 
said to have lost all resemblance to that with which they first began," and that the original version of 131 
words was reduced to an epitome of twenty-one. More recently, with a group of Cambridge adults, 
Mr. Bartlett has employed the same technique to investigate the effects of introducing a legend derived from 
one sphere of culture, that of primitive savages, into another sphere of culture, that of civilised intellectual 
adults. {Folk-Lore, xxxi., 1920, pp. 30 et seq., "Experiments in the Reproduction of Folk Stories,") 
Once more, it is instructive to note that the changes introduced into the modified versions clearly 
illustrate the mechanisms which, as psycho-analysts maintain, largely underlie the distortions of rumour. 

( 2 ) This distinction is, to my view, of special interest to the teacher ; and under different names is con- 
stantly recurring in psychology. In psycho-analysis the reader will at once recall Bleuler and Jung's distinc- 
tions between " directive " (or " realistic ") and " autistic " (or " phantastic ") types' of thinking, and between 
" extro- verted " and " intro- verted " types of mind (based perhaps on Ereud's two principles or motives of 
"reality " and " pleasure "J ; in Erench psychology, Binet's " objective " and " subjective " types, and his 
" simplistes " and " intervretateurs " ; in American psychology, James' " associative " and " reasoned " types 
of thinking ; in German psychology, Midler's " perseverating " and " non-perseverating " types, Meumann's 
" fluctuating " and " fixating " types, Pfeiffer's " associative " and " apperceptive " types ; among scientific 
writers, Ostwald's "classical" and "romantic" types; among literary writers, Schiller's "naive" and 
" sentimental " types. I need hardly add that most reproductions belong to a mixed or intermediate type- 
one tendency perhaps predominating, but never excluding the other. 

( s ) The passage as set for this experiment was slightly longer than the extract printed below ; it con- 
tained 212 words. The sentence which, in Ruskin's original narrative, follows the phrase " spear-like pine " 
("Ear above shot up red splintered masses of piled-up rock, jagged and shivered into hundreds of queer 
forms ") was at first retained, only to be discarded in the later tests. I should add that, in the class that 
produced the second and most singular version, both teacher and pupils (particularly those who handled the 
story last of all) were unusual in both temperament and ability. I must also record my indebtedness, not only 
to the various teachers who used my reading-test for the above enquiry, but also to Mr. J. C. Eliigel and Mr. 
F. E. Bartlett, who have been good enough to read the children's reproductions, and, either in correspondence 
or conversation, to make valuable criticisms and suggestions in connection with this experiment. 

( 4 ) The psycho-analyst will at once be reminded of Ereud's analysis of the psychology of fantasies and 
dreams, and of Jung's analysis of the psychology of rumour. In the latter, he may remember, cumulative 
reproductions, given by a class of girls for a dream related by one of their number, are shown to continue 
and to complete the processes at work in creating the original dream. He will, too, perceive a close analogy 
between the mental tendencies at work in the elaboration of dreams and those at work in the above re- 
elaboration of Ruskin's story. The final version may be compared to the " manifest content " of a dream ; 
the original narrative to the " dream material." In the progressive conversion of the latter into the former 
the following dream-like operations perhaps deserve attention. 



280 

Cumulative Reproduction. 
(I.) 19 Boys, aged 12 and 13, Standard VII. 
Final Version. 1 

There were two brothers, and one of them was in prison. 
The other, whose name was Tom, passed by the prison 
and jeered at his brother and showed him a bottle of holy 
water. This made his brother furious, but Tom took no 
notice and went on his way. He was trying to find the 
Golden River. 

Cumulative Reproduction. 
(II.) 16 Girls, aged 12 and 13, Standard VII. 

Final Version. 1 

There were two young brothers who were rather poor, 
named Tom and Dick. Dick was a happy lad, but Tom 
was very ill-tempered. And one day he stole something 
and was sentenced to a term of imprisonment. One day 

It is, first of all, to be remarked that all of the changes appear to have been made unintentionally and 
most of them to have been made unconsciously : the child sincerely believes himself to be reproducing the 
real purport, if not the identical words, of the version he has received. Of the numerous modifying processes, 
the most conspicuous is that which, in dream-analysis, would be termed " secondary elaboration." This in 
turn involves, as its most constant instrument, a process of "rationalisation." Attempts are repeatedly 
made to supply reasons for facts which in the version received are merely stated without explanation : a 
theft is invented to explain William's imprisonment ; a draught of wine is invented to explain the strange 
appearances of the rocks and crags, the original reason— the light of the rising sun — having been suppressed. 
The unfamiliar and the unpleasant is often omitted or repressed. Much of the alteration, however, is gener- 
ally attributable to the fact that the less clever children, who handled the story in the middle of the series, 
dropped out many of the connecting phrases ; and related what they recalled in the order in which they 
recalled it, regardless of the true logical or chronological order. At this stage, the versions had much of the 
bizarre inconsequence that marks the majority of dreams. Later hands, at once more critical and more 
inventive, re-systematised the story. Several incongruities, however, still remain : for example, the brothers 
are said in the first sentence to be poor, but in the last paragraph to live in a mansion. 

Isolated words, if vivid, may be correctly remembered. Like most emotional ideas, particularly the 
exciting and the pleasant, they have what I have elsewhere termed " suggestive dominance " ("The Develop- 
ment of Reasoning," loc. cit. sup., p. 126). Whether in themselves trifling or essential, they persist in the 
memory; and are then apt to be fitted, by a process which the psycho-analyst would term "displacement," 
into an incorrect context, or supplied with a fabricated context to give them a satisfactory meaning. " Cliffs " 
suggest a seashore ; " oil " makes its appearance because one of the children used the word "anoint." By the 
punning process so common in subconscious fantasy-making, the reference in the original to Tom's " spirits ' ' 
appears to have partly suggested that he drank the wine ; the " spear " to which the pines are compared 
becomes an instrument which almost literally cleaves the rock. Except that the quoted portion of the dialogue 
is put into oratio obliqua, the general tendency is for the incidents to become even more concrete and more 
dramatic than they are in the original. Unfamiliar phrases and incidents are throughout assimilated to those 
more familiar to the child : according to Ruskin, Tom shook the bottle of water before William's eyes to 
taunt him ; by the children this is rapidly converted into shaking his fist at him, or the water (later, oil) over 
him, or dashing the bottle to the ground. Similarly, Holy Water, unfamiliar to most Protestant children, 
becomes transubstantiated into Holy Wine. Although the matter is read silently and rewritten silently on 
paper, auditory confusions are common : e.g., " holy water " becomes " golden water," and the " massy moun- 
tains " become " mansions." The amalgamation of the phrases " Golden River " and " Holy Water " into a 
single phrase, " Golden Water " — later improved into " golden oil "■ — is an evident instance of " contamina- 
tion.'* Proper names are readily confused, forgotten, or misinterpreted : William first becomes " Dick " ; and 
a later hand inverts the two characters ; the " King of the Country " becomes " King Charles " — an 
intrusion from an historical novel read on the same day. As in dreams, incidents, persons, and objects are apt 
to be repeated or multiplied : there are in the final version three visits to the prison instead of one ; the bottle 
of water appears first as " Holy Wine " and then as " golden oil " ; the " King of the Golden River " (from 
whose stream, according to one child, the Holy Water has been taken) suggests the " King of the Country " 
and the " Holy Man." The " Holy Man " is evidently a composite personality : a little questioning at once 
revealed that, with the King of the Golden River, had become fused various recollections from accounts of 
the Ascension, from a visit to Faust, and from a legend of a hermit who lived by a well. Above all, the 
children's deep-rooted desire to have for every story a happy ending and a simple moral has had free play : 
the prisoner escapes ; and the attempted reformation apparently succeeds. The fantasies embodied in the 
story thus represent the fulfilment of primitive wishes. Nor would it be difficult to argue that the wine and 
the water, Dick and Tom, and the several incidents in the story, could be taken as symbolic of certain funda- 
mental moral ideas common to the children's minds. (*) For the correct original see below, p. 351. 



281 

Dick visited his brother in prison, and his brother said, 
" Hullo, my brother, have yon brought a pardon from 
King Charles ? " Dick said he had not, and then Tom 
lost his temper and shook his fist. When Dick saw how 
rebellious his brother was, he went to a holy man and told 
his tale to the man. He received a flask of holy wine with 
instructions to give his brother to drink. After expressing 
his thanks to the holy man, he again visited his brother 
and bade him drink the holy wine ; but Tom in another 
fit of passion dashed the flask against the wall. So Dick 
turned sadly away, and, as he felt tired, he sat down on the 
seashore and drank what was left of the foaming wine. 
Then suddenly the cliffs seemed to go into all sorts of queer 
shapes and went red and misty and split in two as though 
pierced by a spear, and out of the smoke he saw the form of 
the holy man ascending. Then the holy man gave Dick 
a cruse of golden oil, and Dick felt happy again. 

So he went back to the prison and sprinkled the 
golden oil on to the bars, and they flowed into a hundred 
pieces, and so Tom was able to escape, and as Tom and 
Dick were going home to their mansion, Dick said to Tom, 
" If you would only keep your temper, we should all be 
very comfortable." 

As a rapid test of sheer intellectual comprehension, then, the method 
of reproduction has serious failings. Dissected phrase by phrase, such a 
version may disclose suggestive information on the qualitative characteristics 
of the writer's temperament ; but, however carefully marked, it does not 
lend itself with much readiness or precision to the quantitative assessment 
of the writer's power of understanding. 

The difficulties involved in the method of simple reproduction may be 
met and partly overcome by the use of two accessory devices. The child 
may be supplied with an abstract framework of the narrative, either in the 
form of a series of questions, or else in the form of a series of incomplete 
statements. He has then to furnish the pivotal words — the cardinal ideas 
on which the meaning of the remainder hinges, the unessential words and 
the general fabric of the context being delivered to him ready-made. 

In the first form, the method of interrogation supplants or supplements 
the method of reproduction. For the present test a list of twenty questions 
has been drawn up dealing with the matter of the piece selected ; it will 
be found on pages 352 and 353. For each correct answer the child receives 
one mark. He may first be desired, if it be so preferred, to give his own 
account unprompted ; in this account the statements which answer questions 
in the list may then be awarded one mark each ; and the questions not so 
answered may be subsequently put to him. This double procedure — 
spontaneous reproduction (Bericht, recit) followed by an interrogatory 
(Verhor, questionnaire) — has been adopted in tests of "capacity to report" 
by Binet, Stern, and others ; and by them has been recommended for 
more general employment. 

In the other procedure for checking comprehension a series of incom- 
plete printed statements is substituted for explicit oral questions. Its 
central principle it borrows from the celebrated test of intelligence bequeathed 
by the late Professor Ebbinghaus, and described above as a " completion 
test." 1 This test, even in its earliest shape, where the intact passage was 

C 1 ) See pp. 233-5. 



282 

never seen but only reconstructed by the candidate, was still a test largely 
of comprehension in reading ; it has, in fact, been so utilised for the measure- 
ment of linguistic ability by American investigators. Others have found in 
it virtues, not possessed by the commoner catechistic method, for estimating 
knowledge acquired, and for testing information gathered upon specific topics 
from previous reading or instruction. Indeed, the artifice is clearly one 
which might be exploited by teachers more freely in their own examination 
papers. Quite recently, Courtis in America, and Ballard in England, have 
ingeniously adapted the same contrivance specifically for testing compre- 
hension in reading. 1 

In my own test, on account of difficulties in marking such completion- 
exercises, I have adhered to the former plan, to the oral questionnaire. Those 
that favour the missing-word device may readily construct their own test- 
sheets by deleting the obvious key-words from the narrative as printed in 
full below ; for accurate results, after the children have perused and laid 
aside the intact passage, the mutilated text, printed or mimeographed, is to 
be completed from memory by writing the correct words in the spaces left ; 
for the roughest purposes, such stories may be simply given as an exercise in 
dictation, certain words being omitted in the recital by the teacher and left 
for the children to insert as they proceed. 

In testing the child's power of comprehending what he reads, whatever 
form of reproduction be subsequently used, it will be desirable always to 
warn the child before reading the original that he will afterwards be examined 
on the subject matter. Handing him the printed extract, the examiner will 
say : " Read this to me aloiid ; and afterwards I shall ask you some ques- 
tions about it," or, " Afterwards I shall ask you to write out the story for 
me in your own words." But, whatever preh'minary instructions be given, 
and whatever method be employed, irrelevant factors will now and then 
intervene with the most unexpected results. Often the slow, inaccurate reader, 
who has wrestled strenuously with the mechanical difficulties of the passage, 
will remember far more than the fluent, easy, or expressive reader. At 
times, despite the most explicit warning, even the best readers may become 
so immersed in the customary task of attending to articulation and expres- 
sion, and to these alone, that they fail utterly to reproduce a single item 
from the story. The same result may ensue from the " emotional confusion," 
which, with many nervous or excitable children, is in an oral interrogatory 
yet more evident than in a written reproduction. In such cases, I supply 
for them the answers to the first two or three questions. Often this will 
suddenly recall at least some of the more memorable incidents — usually the 
fact that one of the men was in prison ; and these in turn will gradually 
bring back to mind the main events in the story. 

The questions on pages 352 and 353 are printed in logical, or at least 
chronological order, regardless of the importance of the items with which they 
deal. Younger and duller children, however, if catechised first and at some 
length upon details possessing small interest for them, are apt to become dis- 
heartened and bewildered ; and to forget what little they might otherwise 
have remembered. With such children, therefore, it is advisable to postpone 
the harder questions to the end ; the figures in the second column of the 
interrogatory indicate the inverse order of difficulty. Where, however, strict 
comparability is essential, for example, in testing children from a single 
class, the same order should be rigidly preserved for all. 

( x ) Courtis has employed a modified form of the completion-test, already familiar in this country for 
testing intelligence. Instead of empty spaces, alternative words are printed in special type, and the child 
has to delete all except the correct word in each group. This simplifies the marking ; but has special dis- 
advantages of its own. 



283 

In difficulty, the passage here set for reading is suited primarily to 
children of intermediate age or of intermediate ability. To test with pre- 
cision the reading capacity either of the younger or duller children, or of 
the oldest and brightest, stories, or other reading matter, adapted more 
specifically to their plane of thought would be desirable. For defectives, in 
particular, Ruskin's story is far too hard. In the special school a few 
children of exceptional reading ability may, it is true, succeed in read- 
ing the passage, not without expressiveness. But, as a rule, even the 
brightest defective needs well over three minutes to work through it ; re- 
quires prompting or correction for well over fifteen words ; and answers 
barely three questions intelligently. 1 

Backwardness of Defectives in Reading. 

In every test of reading, and, above all, in tests of comprehension, the 
defective ranks decidedly below his general plane of intelligence, even when 
intelligence is judged by a semi-linguistic scale, like the Binet-Simon tests. 
His mental age for reading is but little over 80 or 85 per cent, of his mental 
age for intelligence. In after life such a child will seek his information from 
sources other than books. I have made enquiries on this point among the 
defective and borderline adults whom I have tested ; and, of those showing 
a mental age of only eight, barely 12 per cent, have continued their reading 
after they have left their school. Below this general level, a servant, a farm 
hand, or a dock labourer scarcely ever opens the pages of a book or glances 
at the columns of a newspaper ; if he receives a letter, he asks a friend to 
read it. Accordingly, to teach reading in a special school to children whose 
mental ratio is less than 50 per cent, is simply to squander time and energy. 

Even with those whose mental ratio falls between 50 and 60 per cent., 
reading should be limited to grasping the sense of common words and the 
meaning of brief passages. To work through paragraphs of printed matter 
is an exercise that should be forced on none but the brightest or the 
linguistically gifted. A child who, after a fair opportunity, fails to reach in 
reading half the attainments that belong to the normal child of the same 
calendar age may well be trained through other avenues. 

Analysis of Backwardness in Reading. 

If a child is backward in reading, the teacher, having examined him 
with reading tests in order to measure the degree of his backwardness, should 
then, in order to ascertain the cause of his backwardness, examine him with 
tests of purely psychological functions. Much will already have been con- 
jectured. Hints as to the inner nature of this cause will probably have been 
gleaned by the way from the child's relative proficiency in the different 
kinds of reading tests — in tests of accuracy, of speed, and of comprehension ; 
from the class of error to which the child is most prone — errors with regular 
"phonic" words, or errors with irregular "look-and-say " words ; from 
the child's performances in tests of other linguistic subjects ; and, above 
all, from a vigilant attention to his natural procedure when actually reading. 
Such deductions should now, if possible, be confirmed by tests of specific 
capacities- — of sight and hearing, of perception and discrimination, of imagery 
and retentiveness, whether visual or auditory, of memory, whether immediate 
or delayed, mechanical or logical, and, finally, of rational analysis and 
rational synthesis. One of the most fruitful experiments lies in an actual 

f 1 ) A simpler story may also be used. But my aim is to illustrate the more important uses of the more 
valuable types of test, not to provide tests for all possible eventualities. 



284 

endeavour to teach the child to read by varied methods — the instruction 
being in the first instance undertaken, not for the direct improvement 
which it may induce in his reading capacity, but for the oblique illumination 
which it may cast upon the particular means that seem best adapted — and 
least adapted — to his particular form of disability. 

Reading is a complex process. It presupposes for its efficient accom- 
plishment the integrity of a large number of more elementary functions ; 
and is, in turn, itself a relatively elementary constituent in a process, or 
group of processes, yet more comprehensive — processes which may generic- 
ally be termed linguistic ; for effective teaching, still more for effective 
diagnosis, reading is not to be divorced from other linguistic activities — from 
writing, spelling, and composition. It is, therefore, to be measured neither 
as an unanalysed unit, nor as an isolated whole. 

If the child proves to be backward in such a subject as reading or spelling, 
the teacher should first hold in mind two truths : the one, that any single 
mental function (as visual memory or memory for sounds) that enters as a 
subordinate component into the total process of reading may by its own 
ineffectiveness render ineffective the larger process in its entirety ; the 
second, that one or another of many different mental functions may assume 
the office of the ineffective function, if only the means of teaching and the 
mode of learning be appropriately changed. The duty of the teacher, there- 
fore, is to find first what element is out of gear, and then to seek another 
element to fill its place. 

He will enquire, to begin with, whether the cause of the backwardness is 
extrinsic — due to ill-health, irregular attendance, or an illiterate home ; 
or, on the other hand, intrinsic — due to causes residing in the child himself. 
If it is intrinsic, he will proceed to ask : is the disability predominantly 
moral or temperamental — due to lack of industry or lack of interest, to 
want of motive or to want of care — or is it predominantly intellectual ? 
And if intellectual, is it but one of many symptoms of an all-pervasive back- 
wardness, crippling general intelligence in each of its many forms ; or is 
it a specific disability affecting the linguistic subjects alone, or, it may be even, 
simply reading alone — suggesting, in fact, what is, in extremer cases, some- 
times designated " word -blindness "I 1 In such a case, is the backwardness 
due perhaps to defective sensation — to partial deafness, or to imperfect 
vision uncorrected by appropria-te spectacles ? Is it due to defective per- 
ception — to an imperfect analysis of forms seen or of sounds heard, of words 
uttered by his o wn lips or of movements traced by his own hand ? Is it due 
to a difficulty in retaining these sense-perceptions, or rather the memories 



t 1 ) Strictly, the term " word-blindness " denotes a condition, most commonly occurring as the seauel 
to an apoplectic stroke, where a hEemorrhage destroys a portion of the visual area of the brain, and so leaves 
the patient destitute of memories for word- forms as seen. The patient sees black marks upon white paper, 
but fails to recognise them as standing for sounds or ideas ; views them as an unlearned Englishman might 
view a text in Greek. It has been supposed that an analogous condition might exist from birth ; that, owing 
to imperfect development of the same portion of the brain, the child might be unable to store up, in the 
shape of memories, word-forms as seen. For the existence, however, of such " congenital word-blindness " the 
evidence is far from conclusive. When, therefore, a child is definitely backward in some linguistic subject — 
backward in that subject by at least 30 per cent, of his age, and in that subject twice as backward as in 
any other school subject or in general intelligence (for so would run my definition of " specific disability ") 
— it still seems wiser to speak only of " special disability in reading " (or spelling, or whatever the subject may 
be) ; and, instead of assuming some gross cerebral defect, such as post-mortem inspection could alone reveal, 
to proceed further, and enquire by actual experiment to what particular defects in various alternative mental 
functions the disability is to be ascribed. Of the possible defects enumerated in the text, the commonest 
seem : (1) failure to discriminate between similar visible forms, especially symbols differing chiefly in the 
order, orientation, or internal arrangement of their component parts ; (2) failure to remember a series of 
sounds in their due order ; (3) failure to associate visible symbol and audible sound in the absence of any com- 
prehensible connection. 



285 

of the forms, sounds, and movement-feelings fully sensed and distinctly 
perceived ? 

And, if the difficulty be a difficulty of memory, it must further be recol- 
lected that memory, too, is of many forms. Some children may be unable 
to evoke memory-images of a particular kind ; many visualisers cannot call 
up sourds ; many audiles cannot visualise ; many carry memories best in 
a motor form — a recollection of movements traced by the hand, or of postures 
assumed by tongue and lips. Others, again, are defective in recognition- 
memory ; they can evoke images, that is, they can imagine ; but they 
cannot identify. Some have poor short-distance memories ; some poor 
long-distance memories. Some have poor rote memories ; and learn bare 
facts only after an exceptional amount of drill. Some have poor rational 
memories ; and learn empirical data better than logical principles. Each 
of these different modes of memory should be separately tested. Very 
frequently the weakness lies in long-distance mechanical memory : the 
central difficulty is to preserve for long periods the arbitrary associations 
between the several abstract symbols — between the word as seen, as 
uttered, as heard, and as written — or between any of these abstract symbols 
and the concrete meaning symbolised (whether that meaning be appre- 
hended clearly as a visual picture or implicitly as definable through words), 
or, finally, between the several elements which comprise one and the same 
abstract symbol, which are apprehended in one and the same mental form, 
and which require to be associated in the correct and proper order, for 
example, the successive letters of a given word. 

There is, it will be seen, a bewildering network of interweaving associa- 
tions. And, as the electrician will disengage and inspect in turn every relay 
in a faulty circuit, so the teacher should test each type of connection, one 
by one, between all possible pairs — visual with articulatory, visual with 
graphic, auditory with articulatory, auditory with graphic, articulatory with 
visual, articulatory with graphic, ideational with graphic, with visual, with 
auditory, and with articulatory. He must note which mode of association 
is feeblest, and so tends to throw the whole series out of action. He must 
also note which mode is most easily formed, most permanently retained. 
He will then in his teaching appeal to the stronger, and distrust the weak. 

But even here the analysis is not yet at an end. The mind is something 
more than a consecutive string of associations. It is a hierarchy of systems 
with systems. Every mental process is to be conceived rather as the function- 
ing of a complex mechanism than as the mere percolation of a simple conduit. 
Every act of learning consists in the organisation of a mental schema — of a 
" neurogram " or a " psycho-physiological disposition," to borrow the technical 
jargon — not in the mere addition of one link to another endwise in a long chain. 
The mind of the backward or defective child is pre-eminently weak in this 
very capacity for mental organisation, in the constructing of such psychical 
systems. He fails not so much in power to associate as in power to integrate ; 
not so much in the capacity to hook, as it were, " C " mechanically on to " A " 
and " A " mechanically on to " T," as in the capacity to synthesise in order 
the letter-sounds, " C — A — T," both with each other and with the letter- 
forms, and the two groups in turn with word-form and word-sound as a 
whole, and each and all with meaning — with mental picture, or generic 
idea — until the whole arrangement can operate as a compound unit of 
implicitly apprehended parts. 

Such, then, are the various functions which should be observed and 
tested before a complete diagnosis can be made of the cause of backwardness 
in reading. 



286 

Cases Illustrative of Backwardness in Reading. 

One or two samples of this specific form of disability I append in illus- 
tration. Cases where the backwardness is in origin extrinsic and non-mental 
— due to absence from school or to ill-health x — I shall pass wholly by. The 
instances below are chosen rather to exemplify how, and by what tests, such 
failings may best be diagnosed. As a rule, it will be seen, the analysis of 
itself points the way to an appropriate, and often a successful, remedy : to 
disclose the cause is to discover the treatment. 

Case I. Boy, Age 12 T 8 ^. Glass, Standard IV. 

Intelligence Tests. Binet, 11-6 2 ; Reasoning, 11-3 ; other Tests, 11 -9. 

Educational Tests. Reading: Graded Vocabulary, 7-5; Directions 7-7 
(guesses words from dominant letters ; hearing names or sounds of letters 
spelt out does not help). Spelling (Graded Vocabulary), 7-0 ; errors show 
confusion between words similar in form, but different in sound ; e.g., 
"beard" or "bead" for "bread," "point" for "paint," "paint" for 
"print." Arithmetic: Mental, 9-6. Problems (with assistance in reading 
the questions), 10-0. Mechanical, 10-2. Four Rules, 11-4. Writing, 10-6. 
Drawing, 10-4. Handwork, 10-2. Composition, 6 (?). Informational 
subjects, 10-5. General Knowledge, 12*0. 

This boy, in spite of only slight backwardness in intelligence and reason- 
ing, is two and a half years backward in arithmetic and manual subjects; 
and five or more backward in linguistic subjects. 

Psychological Tests. Vision : sight normal ; perception and immediate 
memory for forms good for level of intelligence. Hearing : acuity, normal ; 
perception, discrimination, and recognition of sounds, poor, especially if 
sound long and complex ; auditory memory (immediate) very poor — fails 
to repeat in numbers (age VI.) and sixteen syllables (age VII.). Muscle 
sense : motor co-ordination, poor ; but motor memory, good. Enunciation : 
very poor and indistinct, — the defect partly motor, partly auditory : can 
correct errors if he hears short sentences slowly and clearly repeated to him. 
Articulatory memory, good. Associative Memory (long distance) : good for 
level of intelligence. Learning nonsense syllables and arbitrary symbols : 
11-5 to 12-0. Logical Memory: 12-0 (only a little poorer with passage read 
to him). 

Interest, Industry, etc. : good. Health and Home Circumstances : fair 
only. 

Diagnosis. The defect is here chiefly in auditory perceptions and 
memory : the child has been taught chiefly by the phonic method, and has 
been unable to analyse and retain the sound-values of letter- and word- 
forms. His motor powers, either oral or manual, afford no subsidiary assist- 
ance. His mechanical memory and his industry have enabled him to make 
good progress in the fundamental rules of arithmetic ; and his backwardness 
in other forms of arithmetic is doubtless due chiefly to his detention in a low 
class on account of his reading disabilities. 

Treatment. To rely primarily on his visual and articulatory memory, 
assisted by his mechanical memory, reasoning power, and interest ; and to 
train intensively his defective articulation and feeble auditory powers, 
especially analysis of phonetic values. 

( l ) Backwardness specifically in reading is often due to illness or absence between the ages of six and 
eight It is during this period that the ordinary child is taught to read. If hefails to learn to do so then, he 
is still, on grounds of age, transferred at the usual time from the infants' department. Once in the senior 
school, he meets with nobody who feels it his business, or perhaps with nobody who feels himself able, to 
teach a child the rudiments of realing ; and so he lingers on, and a few years later appears, in a very literal 
se.ise, word-bind. ( 2 ) Test-results throughout are given in mental years. 



287 

Progress (after one year's training). Reading, 9-5, Spelling, 8-8: (im- 
provement at nearly twice the normal rate). Arithmetic (Mechanical), 11-2. 
Problems (with assistance in reading), 11-0. 

Case II. Boy, Age lly^. Glass, Standard IV. 

Intelligence Tests. Binet, 11-4 ; Reasoning, 10-8 ; other Tests, 11-1. 

Educational Tests. Reading: Graded Vocabulary Test, 8-2 ; Directions, 
7-8. (Errors greatest with irregular words : endeavours to reconstruct word 
from sound-values of letters ; but frequently guesses blindly and commits 
reversals ; recognises a word most easily when it is spelt aloud to him.) 
Two- and Three-letter words: fairly accurate, but very slow (speed, 7-8). 
Spelling, 8-0. Errors : phonetic spelling ("pickser " for "picture," "plesent" 
for "pleasant ") and reversals ("saw" for "was"). Dictation: 8-9. Arith- 
metic : Mental, 9-1 ; Mechanical, 10-0; Problems, 9-6. Writing, Drawing, 
Handwork: 11-0 to 11-5. Composition: amount, 10-8; quality, 10-0. 

Psychological Tests. Visual and Auditory Acuity, and Motor Control : 
normal or nearly so. Imagery : Visual, poor ; Auditory, good. Visual 
analysis (describing a picture while present) : fairly good ; Visual report 
(describing picture from memory) and Visual recognition : very poor, about 
9-0 : (in dealing with objects shown tends mentally to note their characteristics 
in words ; failed badly in Binet 's Test of Memory Drawing.) Mechanical long- 
distance memory : not good (10-2). Interest poor : believes he will never read. 

Diagnosis. Specific backwardness in reading and spelling due to poor 
analysis and memory of visible word-forms. Arithmetic suffers from weak 
memory for arbitrary associations and deficient reasoning. 

Treatment. To rely on auditory memory and analysis : increased 
emphasis on phonic method. Additional drill and revision for memory work. 
Intensive training of visual analysis. Individual work to secure full atten- 
tion, and remove the discouraging consciousness of persistent failure. 

Progress (after one year). About eighteen months' improvement in 
reading. Somewhat less than a year's progress in spelling and arithmetic. 
No improvement in visual memory. 

(ii) SPELLING. 

For spelling, as for reading, the test-material may be either discontinuous 
or continuous. It may consist of a catalogue of isolated words ; or it may 
be taken from a consecutive piece of prose. The former may be termed a 
vocabulary test ; the latter a dictation test. In practice, either test dis- 
closes, together with obvious merits, special disadvantages. 

(a) Graded Vocabulary Test. 

[Test 6.] 

For general purposes the most serviceable test of spelling is supplied 
by a graded vocabulary — a list of words increasing in difficulty by equal 
degrees, and classified on an age-basis akin to that adopted for the analogous 
test of reading. Such a test is printed below on page 354. As before, the 
words chosen are those successfully spelt by approximately one-half of the 
specified age-group. 

For spelling, however, the series begins at a year later than for reading, 
namely, at a theoretical age of five ; and there are only one hundred words. 
The regulations of the earlier Board of Education Code implied that children 
should be able to spell the words they read. But to spell a word is harder 
than to recognise it when spelt already in print. " Emergency," for example, 
is correctly read by 43 per cent, at the age of eleven ; it is not correctly 



288 

spelt by such a proportion until the age of thirteen : there obtains, as it 
were, an interval of orthographic latency. At the earlier ages the delay is 
not so great ; but it is still perceptible : for the first few years after com- 
mencing to read and write it averages about twelve months. The latent 
period, however, is longer with common irregular words, such as are learnt 
by " look-and-say " methods, than with words constructed according to rule, 
and learnt by phonic principles, or, it may be, not so much learnt as deduced. 
At the same level the same words, therefore, cannot be used both for reading 
and for spelling. 

When administering the test, the teacher should employ as wide a range 
of test-words as possible. To set a child or a class only the ten words assigned 
to the corresponding mental age is not enough. The words for the age 
below and for the age above should at least be included. In dictating the 
list, each word should be pronounced separately. The enunciation should 
be quite distinct and moderately slow, without, however, any dislocation of 
the syllables. The words may be repeated if necessary ; but are not to be 
enshrined in an illustrative context. No time-limit is imposed. 

One mark is awarded for each word correctly spelt. To find the total 

score, take the number of crucial words, actually dictated and rightly spelt, 

and add to them the number of all the easier words, which in the list precede 

those dictated, but were not themselves dictated because presumably known. 

Thus derived, the score may be regarded as roughly indicating the percentage 

that the child can now spell out of the total number that should form his 

entire spelling and reading vocabulary at the age of leaving school. From 

this total score a mental age for spelling can be calculated, as for reading, 

by the following formula : — 

„ „,. , /Words Correct , _A 
Spelling Age = ( + 5 J Years. 

From the mental age, in turn, the child's backwardness can, if required, be 
directly computed. 

Results in the usual form are given in Table XL VI. In spelling, defectives 
appear particularly backward ; and normal boys, especially during senior 
ages, appear backward as compared with normal girls. 

(b) Dictation Test. 

[Test 7.] 

To test spelling simply by a disjointed list of unmeaning words has 
evident disadvantages. In such a test the accuracy of the examinee varies 
considerably with the clearness of the examiner's enunciation. Further, 
with homonymous words inevitably, and with all words in a lesser degree, 
the correct spelling is associated, and rightly associated, with the sense as 
closely as with the sound. Moreover, the type of spelling-capacity that is 
required for practical purposes is the ability to spell words automatically, 
when the attention is diverted to the purport of the total context, rather 
than riveted on the orthography of the isolated unit. 

Accordingly, a second test has been attempted. In the test material 
given on page 355 the words are strung into phrases or sentences which 
carry some degree, although perhaps a low degree, of meaning. As distin- 
guished from the discontinuous vocabulary test described above, which, 
according to the common but narrow usage of the phrase, might be styled 
par excellence a " spelling " test, this continuous type of test answers to the 
exercise familiarly termed " dictation." 

In order to secure test-material suited to diagnosing a wide range of 



289 

mental ages, it is preferable, with spelling as with reading, to employ a 
passage which begins with the easiest words, and in the sequel gradually 
increases, or at least materially varies, in difficulty. Unfortunately, to con- 
struct a coherent paragraph solely of hard words, without introducing easy con- 
necting words, is as arduous as to build a firm wall of bricks without mortar ; 
and with such a composite structure the young child, who neither attempts, 
nor understands the hard, long words, is apt to omit or to misspell even the 
short and easy connectives. Indeed, for him, this portion of the test, if given 
at all, degenerates once again into an exercise with disconnected vocables. 

There are various expedients. Partly, though not entirely, the difficulty 
may be mitigated by counting, not the number of correct words, but the 
number of correct letters. This method of evaluation carries an additional 
advantage. From a comparatively brief test it extorts far more information ; 
and it differentiates, with minuteness and precision, even those borderline 
defectives who make abortive attempts at numerous two- and three-letter 
words, but fail utterly to spell more than one or two such words with complete 
correctness. 

Another device is to embed the test words in an explanatory sentence. 
The majority of passages that the teacher uses for dictation in class are selected, 
if they are selected deliberately at all, for the sake of but a few crucial words. 
The rest of the material is but rubble to give these words connection and 
support : it supplies to them a context and a meaning ; but, as a test of 
spelling, it is in itself largely, if not wholly, otiose. Indeed, it is no un- 
common device for the examiner to mark, and sometimes even for the 
children to write, only the critical word in each sentence. Some ingenuity 
in the examiner, and some sacrifice of coherent thought in the test, may, in 
part, at any rate, obviate the need for so cumbrous a proceeding ; and 
sentences may be compacted out of words, of which every one is a service- 
able test-word. The passage printed for Test 7 below is a verbal breccia 
of this sort. It is an agglomerate rather than a conglomerate. Into the last 
few lines, to impart some semblance of cohesion to the sesquipedalian posers, 
I have, indeed, admitted, what Dr. Johnson himself could not have excluded, 
one or two stray articles and particles. But, with these exceptions, every 
word has been carefully chosen, and expressly inserted, because it seemed 
fitted for the purpose of the test ; there is no superfluous cement. 1 

In dictating the passage, I would advise, simply for uniformity, the 
following procedure. Read each sentence completely through before the 
children attempt to write. Then dictate the portion thus read, very slowly, 
in phrases of two or three words, repeating each phrase a second time after 
an interval of about two seconds. The phrase may be repeated a third time, 
if this is especially requested. Incline throughout to a pronunciation collo- 
quial rather than pedantic, the " e " in the last syllable of " kitten," " sen- 
tence," "model," excellent," the first "a" in "acceptable," and the first 
" u " in " picturesque " and the last in " adventure," should all be given the 

(*) My latest trials, however, reveal such weaknesses as the reader will himself easily suspect. The 
monosyllables in the final section, few as they are, are sufficient to introduce substantial variations into the 
measurement when the test is placed in different hands. Nor is the sacrifice of sense, however unavoidable, 
entirely to be condoned. Originally, to quicken a childish interest, the passage propounded a simple riddle 
and announced a reward for its solution, in the manner of a newspaper advertisement. To ensure a better 
standardisation, the wording had to be altered, and what little sense existed has since almost evaporated. 
Dictated in unconvincing accents the test may elicit no better achievement than if it were in form what it is 
in fact — a mere catalogue of words. Those who fail to construct a better test upon these principles or to 
devise better principles for another type of test may find the present passage, with all its imperfections, 
interesting and helpful, if they consistently adhere to their own method of dictating the test, where they 
cannot precisely follow mine. It may be, however, that every test, framed upon lines such as the above, is 
bound to prove, as the present instance too plainly suggests, more elaborate than efficient, over-ingenious 
and under-exact. 
U 



290 

interdeterminate sound. Similarly, " ci " should be pronounced " shee " or 
" sh." Final " d " and " s," though clearly articulated, should not be over- 
stressed. 

One mark is to be given for each correct letter. The constant counting 
up of every letter would be a slow, laborious process. Accordingly, the 
material has been so contrived that, in all but the final paragraph, the 
clauses contain exactly some round number of letters, such as ten or twenty. 

Averages, standard deviations, and borderlines for the several ages are 
given in Table XLVII. 

Backwardness of Defectives in Spelling. 

In spelling and dictation, the defective ranks far below his level for 
intelligence : the difference is greater even than for reading, probably 
greater than for any other subject. His mental age for dictation is less than 
80 per cent, of his mental age for intelligence, even as assessed by the Binet- 
Simon scale, and probably less than three-quarters of that mental age as it 
would be assessed by a scale exempt from all linguistic bias. Among the low- 
grade adults whom I have tested, spelling is much worse than among special 
school children of the same mental level. With such persons, exact orthog- 
raphy is the last thing to be learnt, and the first thing to be forgotten. Yet, 
even if they cannot spell, they can still write. Of the adults, indeed, showing 
a mental age of only eight, barely 7 per cent, can compose even the simplest 
letters. But at the mental age of nine as many as 37 per cent, attempted 
to write. For generalisation the groups tested are too small and hetero- 
geneous. But it is clear that, with individuals of undoubtedly low grade, 
difficulties in the mechanics of spelling do not always hinder spontaneous 
writing in the way that difficulties in the mechanics of reading usually preclude 
spontaneous reading. As with reading so with spelling, it is assuredly both 
useless and wasteful for the special school to inflict the labour of spelling 
lessons upon any of the children whose mental ratio is below 50 per cent., 
or even upon the majority of those whose mental ratio is below 60 per cent. 
Among the latter, however, there may be not only a few individuals showing 
special linguistic ability, but also a few individuals showing special graphic 
interest — the desire to express themselves and to communicate with others 
by means of writing. With these, therefore, the writing lesson should not 
be discontinued on the ground merely of an ineradicable weakness in spelling. 

But with them, and indeed with most defectives, it would probably be 
wiser to aim in spelling at the barest essentials alone, to abandon the hours 
of drudgery and drill with harder irregular words, and even to rest satisfied, 
for the simple communications such simple minds attempt, with a simplified 
or phonetic orthography. If, therefore, in spelling, after individual testing 
and teaching, the child has not acquired at least half the attainments of a 
normal child of the same calendar age, forgo all formal attempts to teach 
a flawless orthographic exactitude. 

Analysis of Spelling Errors. 

In the diagnosis of a child's disability in spelling, a statement of the 
type of error to which he is prone contributes a datum quite as suggestive 
as the measurement of the degree of backwardness to which he has lapsed. 
Accordingly, to assist this qualitative analysis, I subjoin two empirical 
classifications of the spelling errors most commonly encountered. The first 
classification is drawn up from the standpoint of the error made ; the second 
from the standpoint of the individual making the error. In neither classifica- 
tion are the subdivisions logically exhaustive or mutually exclusive. But 



291 

a system theoretically perfect would contain many subdivisions over- 
crowded, which for practical uses should have been split ; and would leave 
many subdivisions virtually empty, wherever the specified errors, though 
logically conceivable, were actually rare. 

SCHEDULE III. 

Classification of Spelling Errors (A). 

1. Visual Substitution. The incorrect letter resembles the correct letter 1 
in visible form : e.g., " hiny " for " king," " gueem " for " queen." 

2. Motor Substitution. The incorrect letter involves similar movements to 
those made in forming the correct letter : e.g., " duelln " for " queen." 

3. Auditory Substitution. The incorrect letter resembles the correct letter 
in audible sound : e.g., " celekt " for " select." An important sub- 
group in this class is one which may be designated Homonymous Con- 
fusion ; words having the same sound, but a different spelling, are 
incorrectly substituted one for another : e.g., " their " for " there," 
"hear" for "here," "too" for "two," "road" for "rode," and wee 
versa. 

4. Motor Omission. One of two letters requiring similar movements is 
omitted: e.g., "gld" for "glad." Sometimes a single stroke only is 
omitted : e.g., " cone hone " for " come home." (The omission of one 
duplicated letter, an error especially common in words containing two 
pairs of duplicated letters, may be classified either here or under 
auditory omission : e.g., " occurence," " embarass," and that facile 
slip of the teacher himself — "accomodation.") 

5. Auditory Omission. One of two letters resembling each other in sound, 
or contributing to the same sound, is omitted. The more important 
sub-types are: (i) Omission of "silent" consonants: e.g., " rythm " 
for "rhythm," " morgage " for "mortgage," " shipwrect " for "ship- 
wrecked." (ii) Omission of portions of diphthongs: e.g., " receved " 
for "received." (iii) Omission of silent (lengthening) "e": e.g., 
"receivd" for "received." 

6. Initial Omission (usually motor ; but often with Condensation, and then 
frequently visual). The initial letters of a word are omitted, usually 
when the preceding word ends with similar letters, the two words being 
then run together in one : e.g., " theeth " for " the teeth." 

7. Final Omission (usually auditory). The last letter of a word is omitted, 
usually when the following initial has a similar sound : e.g., " he ask to " 
for "asked," and, with Condensation, "alright" for "all right," doubt- 
less influenced by the analogy of "always." 

8. Motor Insertion. A letter, usually involving similar movements to those 
of the correct letter, usually inserted immediately before or immediately 
after the correct letter : e.g., " globle " for " globe." 

Motor insertion (and, less frequently, other types of error) are occa- 
sionally determined by habit (Assimilation) : e.g., " pronunciation," 
" similiarity " — due, not to faulty pronunciation, but to greater mechani- 
cal familiarity with " pronounce " and " peculiar." 

9. Auditory Insertion. An incorrect letter, having, or contributing to, the 
same sound as the correct letter, is inserted : e.g., " seleckt " for 
" select." 

t 1 ) For brevity the term " letter " is used throughout as including not only single letters, but a com- 
bination of letters having a single sound, such as might otherwise be represented by a single letter, in short, 
what may be technically termed a " phonogram." 



292 

10. Motor Transposition. Two correct letters, usually adjacent letters, are 
transposed, the resulb being usually an incorrect sound, but seldom a 
transposed sound: e.g., "siad " for "said," "salior" for "sailor," 

" mountian " for "mountain," " guage " for "gauge." 

Where the order of the letters in a word is reversed, the error is often 
described as Inversion: e.g., "no" for "on," "god" for "dog," 
" saw " for " was," and vice versa. 

11. Auditory Transposition. Two correct letters, or more commonly sylla- 
bles, are transposed, the result being an erroneous transposition of 
sounds : e.g., " Put the cerely in the scurrily " for " celery in the 
scullery." (Where the transposition of sounds is not a temporary lapse, 
most auditory transpositions are due to faulty pronunciation. Here, 
therefore, it is not always possible to classify the error, immediately and 
with certainty by mere inspection.) 

12. Duplication. A single letter is erroneously duplicated. Such duplica- 
tion may be perseverative : e.g., " merrilly " for " merrily " ; or antici- 
patory : e.g., " dissappoint " for "disappoint"; or transposed: e.g., 
"paralele" for "parallel," and " merilly " or " meerily " for 
" merrily." 

13. Repetition. A combination of letters, sometimes a complete word, is 
erroneously repeated. (Usually motor, e.g., "merrilily" for "merrily." 
Sometimes auditory, e.g., " precisition " for "precision," "neigherbor- 
hood " for "neighbourhood." 

14. Anticipation. A letter or, more commonly a syllable, is inserted or 
substituted from the following syllable (" intra-verbal " anticipa- 
tion): or word ("inter-verbal" anticipation, usually with "contami- 
nation," i.e., the correct and incorrect syllables contain one or more 
identical letters) : e.g., (a) intra-verbal : " husdband " for " husband," 
" neucleus " for "nucleus"; (6) inter-verbal: " pictard card" for 
" picture card." 

15. Perseveration. A letter contained in a preceding syllable or word, 
usually some dominant element in it, is incorrectly inserted or substi- 
tuted, frequently with " contamination " : e.g., (a) intra-verbal : " pro- 
trect " for " protect " ; (b) inter- verbal : e.g., " the theeth " for " the 
teeth." 

16. Faulty Pronunciation (Articulatory Errors 1 ). The incorrect letter cor- 
rectly represents this child's incorrect pronunciation : — 

(a) Omission of sounds 2 : e.g., " Febuary " for " February," "Artie " 
for "Arctic," " twelth " for " twelfth." 

(6) Insertion of sounds : e.g., " heighth " for "height." 

(c) Transposition of sounds : (i) of syllables (i.e., complex sounds) : 
e.g., " pememant " for " permanent," and perhaps " cerely " for 
" celery " ; (ii) of letters (i.e., elementary sounds) : e.g., " persent " for 
" present." 

(d) Substitution of sounds, usually vowel sounds : (i) with accented 
vowel sounds : e.g., " Voilit " for " Violet " (the second " i " illustrates 

f 1 ) Articulation is, of course, a motor process. But to avoid cumbersome technicality I have (as is 
commonly done) used the term " motor " throughout as equivalent to " grapho-motor " or " hand-motor " ; 
and I here use the more familiar term " pronunciation " in place of the phrase " articulatory-motor processes." 
I am not, therefore, introducing a new principle of division, as the change in phraseology might at first sight 
suggest. 

( z ) I use this familiar term for what is to the child really an " articulatory unit " rather than an audible 
sound. 



293 

the following sub-group) ; (ii) with unaccented vowel sounds ; a large 
group capable of further subdivision according to the sounds confused : 
e.g., "a" for " e," "e" for "i," and vice versa; especially common 
with " indeterminate ' e ' " and sounds resembling it : e.g., " sentance " 
for "sentence," "fountin"for "fountain," " privelege " for "privilege." 

For diagnosis, it is further important to classify spelling errors as belong* 
ing to one or other of the following broader groups, arranged according to 
the tendencies of the person making the error rather than according to the 
nature of the error made. To identify errors under these further heads, it 
is, as a rule, necessary first to repeat the same or similar tests, although with 
experience it becomes possible to identify the child's errors tentatively by 
mere inspection. To the teacher it will be at once evident that the different 
types of error, when detected, need each a different procedure or method to 
ensure their ultimate correction. 

SCHEDULE IV. 

Classification of Spelling Errors (B). 

I. Lapses : the child knows the correct spelling, but fails for the moment 
to reproduce it. If the same test is repeated, the same error is not, as 
a rule, repeated ; and if the child's attention is called to the misspelt word, 
he will rectify it without further information or fresh instruction. Such 
" slips of the pen," such errors of " carelessness " — as they are often inade- 
quately called — form by far the commonest type of error. As a rule, a lapse 
exhibits only a single error in a single word ; and the words so misspelt are 
easy and familiar. The errors classified above as motor — whether of omission, 
insertion, substitution, or condensation — are, as a rule, lapses. The errors 
classified as auditory rarely occur as lapses. 1 

II. Extemporisations : the child does not know the correct spelling, and, 
therefore, invents — usually from analogy with the construction of more 
familiar words — an impromptu spelling of his own. If the test is repeated, 
the same word is erroneously spelt, but the form of the error is not, as a 
rule, the same. Something new is improvised. Thus in five successive 

(*) Lapses in spelling, like lapses in reading (see above, p. 278), prove frequently, especially in older 
and well-educated persons, to be due to what mo.7 loosely be termed a psycho-analytic mechanism. A 
young adult girl, quite normal and intelligent, who is under my observation at the moment, spelt " origin " 
three times in the same essay as " origan." Requested to spell it aloud, she said, "o, r, g, a, n — 'origin'; 
oh, no.; that's 'organ.' O, r, i, g, i, n." Having thus realised the misleading association, she has never 
misspelt the word since. In a similar way, by free association, "annalyse" (an incorrigible error for 
"analyse") suggested "Anna; a foreign coin; and another one whose name I forget — ru — ? . . . India •' 
I've often amused myself by fancying I was an Indian girl in a previous life." The misspelling was now 
cured. After hunting up the word "consciousness" in a dictionary, she repeatedly transcribed it 
" ecnscienceness." She had looked for "conscience" and "conscientiousness." Most of these words she 
could spell orally with perfect exactitude ; but she explained : " My hand is always doing things I know 
it shouldn't, when I'm thinking of something else." 

Cases of this type sometimes rationalise their mistakes by expressing their ingrained impatience of 
petty orthographic conventions ; and this impatience in its turn seems often a symptom of a deeper and 
more general intolerance, dating from the earliest years, of nursery rules and regulations. Their writing ia 
usually as slovenly as their spelling, almost by a half-obstinate defiance. Literary composition is for them 
not a thing to be confined by pedantic restrictions as to times and seasons, or ways and means ; rather it is 
a spasmodic discharge of inner desires upon worthless sheets of paper. A neurotic delinquent of ten spelt 
well when she wrote well ; and when she wrote badly and spelt badly (the products were then commonly 
smudgy letters of abuse) what she wrote was, in a double sense, unfit to read. Students of Dr. Ernest 
Jones' Papers on Psycho-Analysis (second ed., pp. 664 et seq.) will immediately divine the character of the 
complex at work. I should like here to acknowledge my indebtedness to my friend Mr. J. C. Flugel, who has 
always willingly discussed with me this and similar points that have arisen during my analysis of such cases 
as the above ; and from his wide psycho-analytic knowledge and experience has generously made most helpful 
criticisms and suggestions. 



294 

exercises the same child spelt the word "necessary " as follows : " nessecery," 
" nessessery," " nessisery," "nessery," " nessecry." Misspellings that show 
several errors compressed into a single word — the word written being often 
at first sight a meaningless jumble of letters — are, as a rule, extemporisa- 
tions. The individual errors are of various types ; but those classified above 
as auditory generally preponderate. 

III. Habitual Errors : the child appears to have learnt an incorrect 
form, which has become fixed, in place of the correct form. If the test is 
repeated, the same error recurs, time after time, with the same word. Thus, 
a second child in five successive tests invariably wrote " necesary." In 
the " extemporary error," the child has failed to form any association what- 
ever between the sound of the word and the way it is to be spelt ; in the 
"habitual error," the child has formed and fixed an association, but it is 
an erroneous one. In such cases there are in the same word seldom more 
than one or two errors ; and usually the errors belong to the types classified 
above as auditory. Habitual errors of a motor type exist, but appear less 
frequent; one child, for example, persistently substitutes "y" for " g," 
" h " for " k," and " 1 " for " b," thus showing a tendency to motor substi- 
tutions of three kinds. It may be noted that the common practice of teaching 
spelling through dictation is apt, with those members of the class for whom 
the passage dictated is too hard, to induce false extemporisations which, 
through repetition, rapidly become ingrained as habitual errors. 

IV. Idiosyncrasies : many children are addicted to some one character- 
istic type of blunder. Again and again the same error is repeated in different 
forms or in different words. A young and backward child, for example, will 
incessantly invert words. A high-grade defective once wrote : "I was the 
god go of the cat no the tale " (the sentence dictated was : "I saw the dog 
go for the cat on the table "). Out of the five misspellings four were inver- 
sions. Subsequent tests displayed the same propensity. Another child is 
reported constantly to add a final mute "e " to words, particularly before 
plural "s": e.g., " whome," " oures," " perhapes " ; and another to 
insert epenthetic consonants, usually anticipating a consonant normally 
occurring toward the end of the same word : e.g., "wringing," "husdband." 1 
In the errors made by the girl mentioned above (footnote ( 1 ), p. 293) more 
than 40 per cent, involved (as she put it) " making the big words bigger " by 
a repetition of internal letters, syllables, or sounds : e.g., " ingenuiniuty," 
"precisition," " neigherborhood," " bigography . " A tendency to repeat 
or to omit whole words or whole syllables is another, more common form of 
idiosyncrasy. Apparent idiosyncrasies in spelling may also be produced by 
faulty pronunciation, such as occurs in local dialect or in speech impediment. 

Analysis of Backwardness in Spelling. 

The diagnosis, then, which is based upon an examination in spelling 
should be partly quantitative and partly qualitative. It should give, first, 
the marks or measurements obtained in the tests, noting what is the indi- 
vidual's " orthographic age," degree of backwardness, or " ratio "; secondly, 
it should state the type of error to which he is most liable — whether, for 
example, his errors are the lapses of a careless speller, the improvisations of 
an ignorant speller, or the fixations and idiosyncrasies of a speller inherently 
and habitually bad ; and, again, whether the errors are chiefly omissions, 
insertions, or substitutions, and whether they are principally motor, visual, 
or auditory. 

( x ) For these two cases I am indebted to Miss Hollingworth. 



295 

These statements the examiner can deduce from spelling tests alone. 
But his end is not attained until he has directed both his tests and his 
observations to discover what special psychological disabilities prompt and 
promote these errors. From the nature of those errors he will have already 
gathered hints as to the directions which he may most profitably explore ; 
and, following the methods described for backwardness in reading, he will 
proceed to analyse the extent and nature of the psychological disability, to 
discover what defects in more elementary processes condition it, and to 
search for stronger mental functions which may be relied upon to do the 
office of the weaker. 

Case Illustrative of Backwardness in Spelling. 

Case III. Girl, Age lO^. Class, Standard III. 

Intelligence Tests. Binet, 10-0 Reasoning, 10-4. Other Tests, 10-1. 

Educational Tests. Reading, 9-7. Spelling, 7-6 (errors largely phonetic). 
Dictation, 7-8. Arithmetic : Mental, 9-0 ; Mechanical, 9-4. Problems, 9-8 
(method usually correct ; but working often inaccurate). Fundamental Rules, 
8-8. Writing, Drawing, and Handwork, about 9-5 (somewhat slovenly). 
Composition, about 9-0 (handicapped by gross spelling errors). 

Psychological Tests. Visual acuity, Perception, Imagery, Memory 
(immediate), unusually good for mental level. Auditory perception and 
memory somewhat poor. Motor control, poor. Long-distance mechanical 
memory for arbitrary associations, very poor for every type of stimulus. 
Logical memory, good. Emotional temperament. 

Diagnosis. Special backwardness in spelling, due more particularly to 
weak long-distance memory. 

Treatment. To rely less on phonic method, and more upon " look-and- 
say " methods in reading. To attach meaning to arbitrary associations — 
e.g., to explain reasons for orthographic anomalies, and use mnemonics. 
Special mechanical drill in spelling by the alphabetic method, and in addition 
and multiplication tables. Special instruction in technique of memorisation. 
Eurhythmic training (proved impracticable). 

Progress. After one year, an improvement equivalent to eighteen 
months' normal progress in spelling and fundamental rules. Work still 
somewhat inaccurate. 

(iii) ARITHMETIC. 

Tests of arithmetic may be classified upon a basis analogous, though 
not identical, with that adopted for tests of reading. They may be divided, 
first, into graded and uniform tests ; and, secondly, by a cross-division, into 
individual and group tests. In arithmetic, as in reading, the range or scope 
of attainments is best measured by test-material graded in difficulty ; the 
ease or speed of working by test-material approximately uniform in diffi- 
culty. Graded tests of arithmetic incline towards one or other of two pro- 
cedures, namely, oral or written. A completely oral test is necessarily an 
individual test ; a written test may be, and usually is, a group test. Un- 
graded or uniform tests are, in arithmetic, though not in reading, nearly 
always written tests. 

In arithmetic, more than in other subjects, teachers are prepared to 
define, precisely and without hesitation, the attainments to be expected at 
successive ages. In arithmetic, therefore, I supposed that graded tests 
would prove the most easy of all such tests to construct. They have proved 
the most arduous. In no subject are children so influenced by the range 
of instruction and so responsive to the degree of practice in the specific 



296 

processes ; and in no subject do those influences now so obstinately defy 
prediction. Teaching, instead of unifying the grading, renders it more un- 
stable. Pupils of a given age who, with a particular group of problems 
succeed in only 10 per cent, at the beginning of the term, may succeed in 
90 per cent, when the instruction for that term is concluded. Much will hinge 
upon the phrasing of the tests. Children are as dependent upon the incul- 
cated formula as the door of Ah Baba's cave upon a " Sesame " in the spell. 
Recast the question to fit the customary cliche ; change but one synonym 
for another, alter but the order of the clauses : and every pupil in the class 
will work the sum correctly, where before almost every one had blundered. 

The old uniformity has passed away. In various directions and in 
differing degrees, most schools have departed from the earlier recommenda- 
tions of the Board. Its code no longer, like a steam-roller, levels all results. 
Syllabuses and schemes of work differ greatly in different schools ; teaching 
methods diverge still more. The proportion of mechanical arithmetic to 
problem work, of mental arithmetic to work on paper, varies enormously with 
different teachers. In girls' departments, in schools in poor neighbourhoods, 
in the youngest classes of ordinary schools, in the older classes of special 
schools, many innovations in the teaching of this subject have been fostered 
and fostered rightly. In London other factors co-operate. Here the raising 
of the age at which children enter the infants' department or are transferred 
to the seniors', there the migration from a school with one scheme of work 
to a school with a different scheme, and almost everywhere the recent system 
of double promotions, have deepened a diversity already profound, and made 
liberty essential. It is not my duty, even were it my desire, to criticise these 
changes fromthe standpoint of administrative efficiency or of educational value. 
But plainly what makes so laudably for freedom and variety in teaching 
will militate against uniformity and finality in the standardisation of tests. 

Above all, tests in arithmetic have proved extremely sensitive to disturb- 
ances of social conditions. There is, indeed, no subject of instruction but 
has been unsettled by the war ; but arithmetic, in virtue of its exacting 
call upon the most delicate functions of the mind, has been dislocated more 
than any. It was the Belgium of the school curriculum. It suffered first ; 
it suffered most ; it suffered more conspicuously than all. The havoc of 
fatigue, of insufficient sleep, of excitement, shock, and strain, of change in 
teachers and in the sex of teachers, was, as a rule, seen earliest in arithmetic. 
At one period, indeed, the whole grading of my problems had to be mater- 
ially reduced, and the general requirements of my norms to be repeatedly 
relaxed. In consequence, as pre-war conditions are gradually resumed, the 
age-assignments for the graded tests will become too easy ; and, for uniform 
and graded tests alike, the standard deviations will probably be found too 
large, and the average attainments will certainly appear too low. 

(a) Mental Arithmetic (Accuracy). 

[Test 8.] 

For individual tests an oral procedure is the most convenient ; but it 
is also the one most exposed to disturbing influences of various kinds. 

In the completely oral test the examiner announces the question viva 
voce. The child works the sum (as the phrase goes) "in his head " ; and 
then returns the answer viva voce. Such an exercise is familiarly known as 
" mental arithmetic." 

A test of " mental " arithmetic need not be exclusively oral. The reply 
may be given by the child in writing ; the question may be presented in 
chalk upon the blackboard or in print upon paper. Provided the child sets 



297 

down nothing but his answer, the work is still said to be " mental." A group 
test in mental arithmetic may, therefore, be carried out by distributing 
printed question-sheets, with blank spaces opposite each question for the 
child to insert the answer. As a rule, a time-limit will be imposed ; and the 
measure will be in terms of speed. This form of test was adopted in my 
experiments at Liverpool ; it has already been described elsewhere ; and 
here need not further be discussed. 

The test in mental arithmetic set out below 1 was designed for use as an 
individual and completely oral test. With older children, above the level of 
standard I., the tests may also be used as a group test, the questions being 
given orally, but the answers written down. With this modification, the 
performances will be slightly inferior to those obtained in an individual 
interview and with a purely oral procedure. 

The test-material has been compiled according to the principles pro- 
pounded for the graded test of reading. There are ten problems for each 
age-group from age four to age fourteen, thus making 110 in all. They are 
picked from a much larger assortment ; and have been chosen as being those 
which are correctly answered by approximately 50 per cent, of the age to 
which they are assigned. They are disposed in average order of difficulty. 

The child, however, should not be given those problems merely which 
are allocated to his own chronological age. If time allows but ten problems 
to be set, it will be wiser to select those which correspond to his mental age, 
as inferred from his school class or " standard," or from tests of another 
kind. But, if possible, the harder problems for the year below, and the 
easier problems of the year above, should at least be included. If the child's 
mental age is totally unknown, it may be advisable first to work upwards 
from the series three or four years below his chronological age, giving a 
problem from each year until the child fails. By choosing one problem only 
from every set, the whole collection can be telescoped into a brief progressive 
test of twenty graded problems, suitable for rough and rapid assessments. 
Mental arithmetic is an activity which is much impaired by fatigue. Hence, to 
give more than ten or fifteen problems at one sitting will seldom be expedient. 

In administering the test each question is to be recited to the child 
clearly, slowly, and with due emphasis. If necessary, the question may be 
repeated once. The child himself should not see the question. Nothing is to 
be written in explanation by the examiner, either on paper or on the black- 
board ; and nothing (except — in a group-test — the answer) is to be written 
by the child. 

There is no time-limit. When the test is given in class, care should be 
taken to allow ample time even for the most tardy to arrive at the best 
answer he can. 

The measure of ability consists in the total number of problems correctly 
answered, whether actually or by implication. 2 If desired, this total can be 
converted into a mental age by an equation similar to that used for reading. 
Averages and standard deviations for normal boys and girls, and for defec- 
tives, are given in Table XL VIII. The arithmetical superiority of boys — a 
superiority which is familiar to all teachers, and which I have already 
discussed both in reporting experiments at mixed schools 3 and in my 
memorandum on sex-differences in arithmetic — finds a clear echo in the 
figures for all but the earlier years. At younger ages the difference tends 
to be abolished, if not reversed. At this period, not only are the children 
of both sexes taught together in a mixed department for infants, but also 
there may be traced among the girls a temporary advantage in all oral work — 

f 1 ) Pp. 356-360. ( 2 ) The suggested exercises for children under four are not to be reckoned. 

( 3 ) Journ. Exp. Ped., loc. cit. sup., I., 2, p. Ill ; cf. also I., 5, p. 373. 



298 

an advantage which in a " mental " test may more than counterbalance any 
slight deficiency of inborn arithmetical powers : it should be remembered, 
too, that experiments in mixed schools disclose throughout school life an 
innate difference far smaller than is commonly assumed. As stated in my 
earlier memoranda, 1 the arithmetic results obtained from schools in good 
neighbourhoods may be more than a year ahead of those obtained from 
schools in poor neighbourhoods. In schools from poor neighbourhoods, 
owing doubtless to the influences already noted in discussing sex-differences 
in reading, the girls are, almost invariably, much inferior to the boys ; but 
in mixed schools in good neighbourhoods, it would seem that, given an 
equal amount of practice, sisters may, in childhood at any rate, calculate 
with greater accuracy and greater celerity than their brothers. Differences 
such as these, associated with sex and social status, recur in all tests of 
arithmetic ; but are perhaps most marked in oral tests. 

Defectives are certainly backward in mental arithmetic to a deplorable 
degree ; yet not to a degree so extreme as might perhaps have been expected. 
Much of their daily lessons is worked in the form of oral problems ; and, 
where the question involves a simple sum in concrete money values, the 
petty transactions of the older defective, in the shop and in the street, place 
him, as compared with the younger normal of equivalent mental age, at a 
relative advantage. Elsewhere he is an infant among youths ; here he is a 
youth among infants. 

All the arithmetic tests proved troublesome to standardise ; but none 
so refractory as the graded series of mental problems. With written work, 
at all events about the middle of the school career, the arithmetic papers 
for external examinations, such as those for the Junior County Scholarship, 
create, notwithstanding the variety of syllabuses, a certain measure of 
uniformity. But with mental arithmetic even this slight levelling influence 
is absent. And in this branch of the subject, particularly with the problems 
for the oldest age-groups, and most of all with the problems for the youngest, 
the standardisation recorded below is doubtless somewhat precarious. For 
the youngest of all, indeed, it proved impossible to base the age-assignments 
solely upon the data obtained from normal children of four or five- Among 
children of such years, differences in the conditions of teaching — -in the 
schemes and methods of the infants' department, in the age at which children 
enter school, in the character of the informal instruction given at home — all 
these have a large and disproportionate influence ; and the results obtained 
are equally capricious. Accordingly, the order and grouping of the easier 
tests has been founded predominantly upon the work of defective children 
of the corresponding mental ages. 

In actual practice it is more instructive to examine children at these 
primitive levels with simple apparatus and with concrete tasks. The nature 
of such material, however, would hardly submit itself to standardisation 
here ; and, indeed, should vary with the character of the appliances with 
which each young child is familiar. Consequently in the present series, such 
problems alone have been included as require no apparatus. 

(b) Written Tests (Accuracy). 

[Tests 9 and 10.] 
The written tests for arithmetic 2 consist of ten examples for each age 
graded upon much the same principles as before. Since written work is 
rarely attempted with children before the mental age of 7— (standard I.), 
no examples appear for the lower years. Even with the series for age 7 — 
the children will tend to work the problem-sums mentally. As the test is 

(*) Distribution of Educational Abilities, p. 65. ( 2 ) pp. 361-365. 



299 

definitely an examination in paper work, the children should be left to read 
the questions for themselves ; and, no matter how simple the computation, 
should display all their working. But at the lower stages some latitude in 
these respects — at the discretion of the examiner and according to the 
teaching-methods in vogue — may be conceded without scruple. In testing 
a defective, for example, isolated words or phrases that he cannot read for 
himself may be read to him. 

For simplicity of scoring, one mark is granted for each correct answer. 
If the answer is incorrect, no partial credit is awarded for propriety of method 
or for accuracy in subsidiary operations. 

At each age the ten examples include five " mechanical " sums and five 
sums in " problem " form. The two types may be distinguished thus. In 
the " mechanical " sum there is, as a rule, but one main operation ; the 
operation belongs to a familiar and well-practised type ; and its nature is 
clearly indicated in conventional fashion either by symbols or by the manner 
in which the figures are set out. In the " problem " the pupil is required 
first to determine for himself what operations are to be performed ; and, 
according to the intricacy of the problem, two or more different operations, 
two or more " steps," may be needed. A test of the former type is a test 
almost entirely of specific habits, of arithmetical automatisms ; and reason- 
ing emerges solely, if at all, in the criticism of the final results, when obvious 
absurdities are checked. A test of the latter type demands, or should demand, 
in order that the circumstances of the question may be rightly visualised 
and the suitable process rightly selected, a wider play of imagination and a 
deeper exercise of reasoning. At times the problem is a problem only in 
name. Where the question itself belongs to a stereotyped class, certain cues 
or catch-words are apt to touch off an appropriate mechanical response ; the 
word " altogether " acts as a cue for the addition table ; the word " left " 
or " remainder " as a hint to subtract : the effort, in fact, may be as blind 
and unreasoning as clicking the trigger of a gun already aimed. Between 
mechanical work and problem work, therefore, the distinction is relative 
rather than complete. 

In their ability to work examples from these two categories, children of 
certain types differ much from one another. For the analysis of arithmetical 
deficiency in individual cases, the distinction is one of the most penetrating 
that can be drawn. Accordingly, in printing the tests, the two kinds have 
been arranged in separate series ; and averages are recorded for each kind 
apart. But in administering the tests it will, as a rule, prove more con- 
venient to set the problem-sums for a given age immediately after the 
mechanical sums for that age, and before proceeding to the mechanical sums 
for the next age. 1 Owing to the greater dependence of written arithmetic 
upon syllabuses and upon the scope of the teaching generally, a narrower 
range of testing than would be necessary for reading or for spelling is admis- 
sible where these conditions are known. As before, a child should never be 
tested only with sums appropriate to his age. But, in general, to avert deterio- 
ration through fatigue, one set — five sums only — will be sufficient to set at 
a single sitting. If for an unknown individual a speedy judgment is wanted, 
and several sittings are therefore precluded, one mechanical sum and one 
problem sum, chosen from each of the three ages which are, respectively, 
below, equal to, and next above the child's presumable level — six sums, 
therefore, in all — will give a crude approximation. For a selected group of 

i 1 ) If the two types be set as alternatives, and the child allowed to choose of each pair either a problem 
sum or a mechanical sum (of equal difficulty), light will be thrown upon two temperamental factors, initiative 
and preference for routine tasks. The psychology of the " optional question," however, has hardly yet been 
analysed. See, for an experiment with non-scholastic questions, I. E. Ash, Fed. Sem., XIX., 4. " The Condi- 
tions and Correlates of Mental Inertia." 



300 

known individuals, already assembled into a fairly homogeneous class, the 
ten sums allotted to the mental age equivalent to their standard will yield 
a finer differentiation. Usually, however, it will be practicable — always, 
indeed, it will be desirable — to include at least one additional series : the 
sums for the mental age above, in a good school ; in a poor or average school, 
those for the mental age below. 

For the " mechanical " tests, copies of the sums should be printed in 
large type, or hectographed in a clear hand ; and the sheets distributed to 
the children. Upon these sheets the children may work the examples, and 
enter the answers, without transcribing either answer or sum. For the 
"problem" tests similar copies of the several questions will again be 
distributed ; but the working will be done, and the answers shown, upon 
a second blank sheet. If the printing or hectographing is impracticable, the 
sums may be first copied from the blackboard by the children themselves. 
But with this plan extraneous factors may easily interfere with the results — 
errors in copying the problem, increased analysis of the problem, loss of 
interest through familiarity with the problem, and general fatigue, due to the 
prolongation of the whole task. In no circumstances should the questions be 
dictated, since children, especially when young, understand a sentence, if 
it is read aloud to them, much more surely than when it is left for them to 
read silently to themselves. 

Total scores and mental ages may be derived as before. Results are 
given for the mechanical and problem tests separately in Tables XLIX. 
and L. Girls and defectives appear most backward in problem tests. By 
both groups, as we have seen, processes that involve mere mechanical rote 
memory are likely to be better accomplished than those that demand reason- 
ing. In problem work, however, the backwardness of the defectives is not 
so glaring as might have been anticipated. Reasoning, it might be thought, 
is the supreme manifestation of intelligence ; and in reasoning, of all mental 
processes, the defective is most deficient. Hence, not without justice, 
teachers who themselves have never taught in a special school expect problem 
arithmetic to be the weakest subject of the defective. There is this, however, 
to be borne in mind : that, for such a child, many of the simpler so-called 
problems are mere mechanical repetitions, with concrete examples, of pro- 
cesses in which he has already been thoroughly drilled. Indeed, his chief 
trouble is to comprehend what he reads, not to work out what he has to com- 
pute. Correct calculation turns simply upon the appropriate functioning of an 
automatic habit, not upon a process of reasoning spontaneously initiated and 
logically pursued. Where genuine and original reasoning is really required, the 
defective breaks down instantly. On the other hand, the so-called " mechani- 
cal " sum, though dependent almost wholly upon specific memories and habits, 
is for the same mental age often somewhat more complex than the nominal 
" problem." It is purely abstract ; it evokes no pioturable scene or setting ; 
it presents no concrete case to control or check the child's thoughts when 
they slip into a channel that issues in an absurd or impossible answer. To 
such lapses the defective is perpetually prone. And thus his score for 
mechanical arithmetic is expressive, not of meagre attainments only, but 
also of a general unreliability, of an ineradicable lack of accuracy. 

* 

(c) Fundamental Rules (Speed). 

[Tests 11 to 14.] 
With the foregoing graded tests, children who lack proper training — for 
example, delicate or delinquent individuals who have attended school irregu- 
larly — often produce results strangely below their true capacity. For these 
and many other causes exercises embracing only the four fundamental rules 



301 

may yield a more equitable test. Samples of test-sheets that may be com- 
piled with this object are appended on pages 366 to 369. 1 In constructing 
them, I have endeavoured to obey a definitely formulated scheme. Conse- 
quently, for each rule or process it is possible to compose an unlimited 
number of test-sheets that in difficulty shall be virtually equal. 

The principles underlying the scheme of construction were briefly as 
follows : first, that all available figures and all available combinations of 
figures, taken in pairs, should be used, as far as possible, with equal fre- 
quency ; and, secondly, that each figure and each pair should be scattered 
evenly over the paper in an order determined by artificial " chance." With 
these precautions the level of difficulty becomes, on the whole, uniform 
throughout the paper ; and any child, after working through the first quarter 
(or, with certain types of sum, the first half) of the sheet, has added, sub- 
tracted, multiplied, or divided all possible pairs of numbers up to nine, once 
each. For addition every other column involves " carrying." Similarly, 
for subtraction half the pairs involve " borrowing." In the division sums 
there are no remainders. 

The children work the sums upon sheets already printed. Five minutes 
are allowed for each paper. The examples are plentiful enough to occupy the 
quickest of the children for the whole of the time. The measure of ability 
is the number of processes correctly worked in the period allotted — for 
addition the number of columns correctly added, for the other processes the 
number of pairs correctly subtracted, multiplied, or divided ; that is, as a rule, 
the number of correct figures in the answer, counting, in the case of addition, 
the "hundreds " as part of the "tens " figure, and, in the case of multiplica- 
tion, the " ten thousands " as part of the "thousands." To facilitate marking, 
the sums are printed in rows of five or ten ; so that for each fine of correct 
answers the child scores, in every type of sum, exactly twenty marks. 

To be mechanically efficient, calculating, like reading, demands correct 
and rapid work ; and, like reading, it may be marked for both accuracy 
and speed. Following the practice of previous investigators, efforts were at 
one time made to separate quality from quantity, to score the papers first for 
the number of mistakes, and then for the amount accomplished in a given 
time. Further experiments revealed that a trustworthy mark for accuracy 
can be attained only after repeated tests upon the same individual. Measured 
by the coefficient of correlation for successive tests, the reliability of papers 
in the fundamental rules, when marked for accuracy alone, seldom rises 
above -35 ; and is, in general, but little over half that of the same papers 
marked for speed. On the other hand, in estimating the accuracy of a class 
or age-group as a body, as distinct from the accuracy of the component indi- 
viduals, a single test-paper will ordinarily produce results reasonably secure. 

Expressed as a percentage of the total amount worked, the proportion 
of error diminishes with age. The figures are given in Table XXXVI. For 
the separate ages the decrease is uneven ; the first three age-groups and the 
last three have, therefore, been combined. 

( *) These test-sheets were originally drawn up for an investigation carried out by a Committee appointed by 
the British Association to enquire into the mental and physical factors involved in education. A full account 
of the results will be found in the British Association Annual Report, Newcastle Meeting. 1916 pp. 307-325. 

Once more I would refer the reader to the suggestive article of my friend and colleague. Dr. Ballard 
("Norms of Performance in the Fundamental Processes of Arithmetic, with Suggestions for their Improve- 
ment," Journ. Exp. Ped„ 1914, Vol. II., No. 6, p. 396). The results recorded in my previous memorandum 
(Distribution and Relation of Educational Abilities, pp. 68-77) were obtained with sheets reprinted for that 
purpose from Dr. Ballard's tests. The test-sheets here described were drawn up to meet certain minor 
criticisms urged against Dr. Ballard's tests by various investigators (see Journ. Exp. Fed., 1916, Vol. in.. 
No. 5, p. 318 et seq.). 

The detailed instructions for drawing up comparable sheets, though simple, are too lengthy to be printed 
here. Any who wish to construct such sheets may obtain the full instructions by communicating with me at 
the Education Offices of the Council. 



302 

TABLE XXXVI. ARITHMETIC. 

Four Fundamental Rules. 

Percentage of Error 



Age. 


Addition. 


Subtraction. 


Multiplication. 


Division. 


7- to 9- 


. 15-0 % 


. . 18-3 % 


.. 17-1% .. 


20-2 % 


11 -to 13- 


• 8-3 % 


. . 7-5 % 


. . 6-7 % . . 


4-6 % 



The percentages are high. But the demand for speed encourages slips, 
and excludes revision. At the same time, had the original unit of marking 
been the final answer instead of the process or column, the percentages, 
particularly for addition, would have been larger still : the tiniest error 
makes the whole sum wrong. If, on the contrary, the unit had been the 
single step (for example, adding two digits only), the figure would have been, 
at any rate for addition, far smaller. Among the four rules measured as 
above, subtraction is worked most inaccurately. The reason is transparent : 
"borrowing" never becomes completely automatic. This peculiar in- 
accuracy, and its cause, are still more evident in using Dr. Ballard's sub- 
traction sums, in which " borrowing " is introduced for every pair of numbers. 
But in mechanical sums of every type the amount of sheer inaccuracy is often 
surprising. Where the whole sum is marked as a single unit, where the length 
of the sum is appropriate to the level of the child, and where the working is 
carried out under conditions exacting maximal speed, there, throughout the 
various classes, high standards as well as low, nearly one-quarter of the 
answers are wrong. The practical import of this is patent : accuracy is 
largely a result of drill — of daily practice in making and keeping the funda- 
mental operations automatic ; such drill is very often dropped in the higher 
classes. A theoretical corollary emerges as well : in an arithmetic test, set to 
estimate ability rather than mechanical correctness, to mark for accuracy 
alone is to defeat the aim of the test. 

Accordingly, in compiling norms for the present papers, accuracy and 
speed have not been kept apart, but amalgamated, as above described, into 
a single measure for the double quality. Norms are given in Tables LI. to 
LIV. 1 

Among the children of ordinary elementary schools, girls are decidedly 
inferior to boys in subtraction and division. In addition, and still more in 
multiplication, they are often superior. The disparity originates chiefly in 
the dependence of these latter tasks upon rote memory for tables, rote 
memory being a capacity in which boys always yield to girls. A pubertal 
decline in accuracy, doubtless transitory, is to be perceived in the figures 
for the later years. At about the age of thirteen, even where the averages 
themselves do not actually sink below the highest of the preceding years, 
the rate of annual increase, up to this point rapid and uniform, begins, in 
almost every instance, suddenly to abate. A re-inspection of the scripts 
reveals that the drop is due to an increase in error rather than a diminution 
of speed. It is a feature that may be remarked in many tests ; 2 and seems, 
as a rule, to overtake girls somewhat earlier than boys. 

( x ) More detailed results, illustrated diagrammatically, will be found in the British Association Report, 
loc. cit. sup. It should be added that norms obtained in subtraction are peculiarly dependent upon the par- 
ticular method of instruction adopted. As a rule, at any rate in earlier years, averages from schools where 
the method of " equal addition " is adopted are superior to those obtained from schools where the method 
of "decomposition "has been taught. For drill the new "Courtis Practice Tests" will be found suggestive. 

( 2 ) Tests of spelling and handwriting, as well as all tests of mechanical arithmetic, show this increase 
of unsteadiness at puberty; and the phenomenon is perhaps not unrelated to what I have termed the phase 
of repression in drawing (see below, p. 322). Those interested in the educational psychology of adolescence 
would find here a fruitful problem for research in secondary and continuation schools. 



303 

The performances of defectives in these tests vary considerably according 
to teaching. Of all four mechanical rules, subtraction with borrowing is the 
one where the backwardness of the defective is most pronounced. Division, as 
a rule, is learnt by normals, as well as by defectives (when it is learnt by 
defectives at all), at a later stage than the other three processes ; here, 
therefore, comparison is dubious : in the main, it appears to be a process 
that is disproportionately hard for the young normal as compared with the 
young high-grade defective, and disproportionately hard for the old low- 
grade defective, as compared with the old normal. In multiplication, and 
particularly in addition, the inferiority of the defective is perhaps less marked 
than in any of the tests we have considered hitherto. Doubtless, the cause 
is in part that which was cited to explain the diminished inferiority of the 
girls — namely, the dependence of these processes upon mere mechanical 
memory. 

Backwardness of Defectives in Arithmetic. 

Although in the various branches of rudimentary arithmetic the defective 
seems thus to be more amenable to instruction and drill than he is in the 
linguistic subjects, yet for the figure-work of after life he relies upon his 
school attainments to an even narrower extent. Among the low-grade 
adults whom I have tested, those about the mental age of twelve would 
usually fumble for pencil and paper to make a computation that the normal 
person works within his head ; those under the mental age of eleven would 
hardly ever exploit their power to add or subtract, to multiply or divide, on 
paper ; those under the mental age of ten do not even trust their memory 
for the addition or multiplication table, but do all by counting ; the only 
school knowledge they retain consists in the well-worn equations of the 
tables of equivalents — the number of pence in a shilling, of shillings in a 
pound, of pints in a quart, and a few other simple conversions falling daily 
within their experience. And in most instances they work by trial and error. 
Watch an elder boy in a special school handing out books to a desk of half 
a dozen children ; or a girl setting a table for as many persons. Seldom does 
the child reason : " Six and myself make seven ; I must fetch seven books " 
or "seven knives and as many forks." Each works by trial and error. 
The boy takes down a pile of books, and hands out one to each till all have 
one. The girl fetches " a knife for Florrie and a knife for May " ; and then 
has to go back again because "Florrie wants a fork." Number as learnt 
in the arithmetic lesson remains an exercise apart, a feat laudable enough in 
itself for a defective, but never spontaneously brought to bear, because the 
necessary intelligence — the power to foresee, to plan, and to apply — is lacking 
to the low-grade mind. 

Unless, therefore, a child has a mental age for general intelligence 
equivalent to at least 60 per cent, of his chronological age he should never, 
in my opinion, be burdened with formal lessons in arithmetic. The simplest 
facts of number should alone be taught him, always in connection with the 
practical needs of practical life. Save for exercise in reading common symbols 
— such, for example, as may be seen on the tickets in a grocer's window — and 
perhaps in writing them, too, he need have nothing to do with paper. This 
proposal, it will be noted, is advanced irrespective of the child's abilities or 
attainments in number work itself. Since the lower levels of arithmetical 
work may be so readily mechanised, a defective may, with practice, counter- 
feit a mental age in arithmetic tests well above his mental age with tests of 
general intelligence ; and yet the mechanisms thus so laboriously constructed 
in his brain will be as worthless to him as a typewriter to a house-dog. 



304 

Analysis of Backwardness in Arithmetic. 

With a child who is not deficient generally, but only backward specific- 
ally in arithmetic, some endeavour should be made to discover the probable 
cause. If carried out in detail, the more purely psychological exploration 
will follow lines much the same as those laid down for reading : the examiner 
will test in detail short-distance memory and long-distance memory, rote 
memory and logical memory, and the association between the various ways 
— visual, auditory, articulatory, and graphic — in which numbers and their 
symbols may be apprehended and learnt. In addition to all this, particular 
powers of reasoning — analysis, abstraction, comparison, synthesis, deduction 
— both with concrete and tangible material and with symbolic and abstract 
material, should be tested and compared. By such methods, a child who is 
backward in mechanical arithmetic may be shown to suffer primarily from a 
more radical defect in some particular form of memory ; and a child who 
is backward in problem arithmetic from a more radical defect in some special 
form of reasoning. 

But, on the whole, I have found such purely psychological tests less 
helpful than intensive tests of particular arithmetical operations. Arithmetic 
as practised in the ordinary elementary school may be regarded as little 
more than a huge bundle of specific habits and memories. Hence, with 
the poor arithmetician the problem for the teacher is often simply this : to 
find which particular habit or memory is not operating as smoothly and as 
automatically as it should. The ordinary class exercises convey little to the 
teacher, because they deal, for the most part, in mere repetitions of the 
same rule. But results obtained by such tests as the foregoing will prove a 
vast quarry of information for him who knows how to extract it. Consider 
the graded tests. Almost inevitably they fall, as it were, into a spiral scheme. 
We begin with simple addition ; and then pass to other fundamental rules. 
Presently addition recurs in the form of a money sum. Later there are 
weights and measures to be added. And, on still higher planes, there appear 
first addition of vulgar fractions, and then addition of decimal fractions. 
In the problem sums addition occurs again in an applied form, or as a partial 
step in a complex process. Analogous cycles are to be found for subtraction, 
multiplication, and division. The same simple processes keep reappearing in 
a more and more elaborate disguise, like the supernumerary actors at a cheap 
suburban theatre that come round and cross again in different dress. By thus 
comparing similar operations upon successive planes we may frequently dis- 
cover where the central difficulty hides. Often an entire class is peculiarly 
backward in subtraction, or, it may be, in division ; and this backwardness 
appears and reappears throughout the scale in every test of the defective 
process. The analysis may be pushed yet further. Graded tests may 
be constructed to examine solely the defective operation. In division, 
for example, we may test efficiency at the following levels : in mechanical 
work, (1) the division table, or, it may be, the power to apply the multipli- 
cation table to the task of division — the- table being regarded as a set of 
specific memories and tested with special reference to the pairs that are 
notoriously hard to learn ; (2) simple division, involving two operations, but 
no carrying and no remainders ; (3) simple division, with carrying, and 
(4) with remainder ; (5) simple division, with zero in the divisor ; (6) division 
by factors, without and (7) with remainders ; (8) long division, without 
carrying or other difficulties ; (9) long division, with zero difficulties ; (10) 
long division with carrying, but where the trial divisor is the same as the 
first figure of the true divisor, and the trial quotient the same as the true 
quotient ; and, finally, cases (11) where the trial divisor is one unit larger 



305 

than the first figure of the divisor, (12) where the trial quotient is one unit 
larger than the true quotient, and (13) where both difficulties are combined ; 
and so forth. Again, in problem work, we may test the child's power of 
interpreting the situation described in each question, of discovering whether 
it is one that calls for the operation of division ; this power depends largely 
upon a right understanding of such phrases as "divide x by y," "share 
x among y," "how many y in x ? ", and the like. Here the child need 
not work out the example in full ; but simply indicate, in a mixed series, 
where he would divide, and where multiply, add, or subtract. 

A similar, but simpler, set of tests, in mechanical and problem form, 
might be made out for subtraction, examples being so chosen as to detect 
whether the difficulty arises from special cases of " borrowing," or from 
particular methods of instruction, as that of " decomposition " — methods 
that often create special difficulties for special individuals. The same may 
be done for the not uncommon weakness in vulgar fractions. Take, for 
example, addition of pairs of such fractions. Examples for each of the 
following types, graded in complexity, may be constructed : — (1) % + J ; 
<2)f + f; (3) i + i; (4) i + § ; (5) f + f ; (6) £ + J ; (7) f + | ; 
(8) J + | ; (9) | + f . Frequently it will be found that a pupil's weakness 
is confined to one particular type or group of types. And, thus located, the 
failing can readily be remedied by giving him further practice in that type, 
or explaining to him more thoroughly the meaning of the process which he 
has but partly understood. After testing, concentrate the drill, which 
should be short, sharp and systematic, upon those children and those pro- 
cesses that are shown to need it. Let each child keep, and aim at outdoing, 
his own daily record. As soon as re-testing shows that intensive drill is no 
longer fruitful, let it be dropped before it is stale. x 

Cases Illustrative of Backwardness in Arithmetic. 

Case IV. Girl, Age 13^, Glass, Standard VI. 
Intelligence Tests. Binet, 13-0. Reasoning, 13-4. Other Tests, 13-0. 

Educational Tests. Reading, 13-6. Spelling, 13-1. Arithmetic : Mental, 
11-6 ; Mechanical, 11-2 ; Problems, 11-8 ; Fundamental Rules, 10-8. Writing, 
Drawing, Handwork, about 12-5. Composition, about 13-5. 

Psychological Tests. Visual memory, poor (fails in memory drawing) ; 
auditory, fairly good. Mechanical memory : immediate, fairly good (recalls 
seven numbers) ; delayed, very poor. 2 Logical memory, good. Industry, 
not very great. Dislikes sums. 

Diagnosis. Special disability in mechanical arithmetic, due chiefly to 
weak long-distance memory, other factors co-operating. 

Treatment. Drill in arithmetic tables ; relying especially on auditory 
memory. To teaoh child to reason out tables and rules, where unable to 
rely upon memory. Practice in mechanical rules of arithmetic with special 
incentives. 

Progress (after six months). Fundamental rules (intensively practised), 
11-6. Barely normal progress in other subjects. (Treatment commenced 
too late ; child's interest flagged.) 

(*) The analysis and classification of errors in arithmetic form an obscure and almost untouched field 
of research. I shall not enlarge upon it here. A suggestive study upon this problem, however, will be found 
in a paper by W. Scott, Journ. Exp. Ped., .1916, Vol. III., No. 5, p. 296, " Errors in Arithmetic." 

( 2 ) This case illustrates the fact that " memory " in all its forms, particularly delayed memory, cannot 
be safely inferred simply from the tests of immediate memory provided by the Binet-Simon scale. 

X 



Case V. Boy, Age 13 T V- Class, Standard V. (promoted on 
account of age). 

Intelligence Tests. Binet, 11-2. Reasoning, 8-5. Other Tests, 10-7. 

Education Tests. Reading : Graded Vocabulary, 12-2 ; Comprehension T 
10-9; Directions, about 11-5. Spelling, 10-4 (errors for the most part 
non-phonetic ; many instances of " visual confusion." Poor in attacking 
unfamiliar words, however regular). Dictation, 10-1. Arithmetic : Mental,. 
9-8; Mechanical, 10-3; Problems, 8-7; Four rules, 11-0 (many errors, 
especially in subtracting with borrowing, and short division). Writing, Draw- 
ing, Handwork : 11-5 to 12-0. Composition: amount, 9-7; quality, 10-7. 

Psychological Tests. Visual and auditory acuity, motor control : normal , 
Imagery : visual, poor ; auditory, average. Visual analysis, visual report,, 
and visual recognition (picture tests and blot tests), very poor. Mechanical 
memory : short distance, good {e.g., repeats seven numbers, twenty-six 
syllables) ; long distance, fairly good. Reasoning, extremely poor. (See 
above under tests of intelligence. Fails badly in " absurdities " and 
"difficult questions"; also fails in "memory-drawing," "change," and 
" nine coins.") 

Diagnosis. The boy was presented as mentally deficient, chiefly on the 
ground of backwardness in arithmetic, together with a history of several 
childish reactions in practical matters. The tests show that his backward- 
ness in arithmetic chiefly affects problem work, and, to a less extent, all 
work in money sums and sums dealing with long measure. He is peculiarly 
dull in reasoning powers and in higher thought-processes generally. This is 
aggravated by the fact that he is almost entirely unable to visualise concrete 
situations, as he has been taught to endeavour to do. Constructive imagina- 
tion is also deficient (note his meagre compositions, fair in quality as far as 
they go). He is an only child in a fairly comfortable and cultured home ;: 
and has not been allowed to mix much with other children, or to undertake 
practical tasks or errands ; but rather encouraged to stay at home and 
read. 

Treatment. Mechanical memory to be exploited to the full for com- 
pound rules in arithmetic. Problem work to be approached through practical 
tasks and manual work. Spelling to be taught by alphabetic method, and 
memorisation of rules. Independence and initiative to be cultivated at home. 
Psycho-analysis, to determine whether the inability to reason is fundamental, 
or due rather to an unconscious mental regression to an early phase of 
childhood. 

Progress (after six months). Little advance shown in tests, except 
reading (directions), spelling, and mechanical arithmetic ; and improvement 
here traceable to direct influence of training. The co-operation of his home 
seemed successful in increasing self-reliance ; perhaps some improvement in 
this respect was to be ascribed to a superficial psycho-analysis which pointed 
to infantile fixations, especially, a latent wish never to grow up. The lack of 
reasoning seemed based upon a vicious circle : it was in part congenital ; but 
a painful consciousness of inherent stupidity had created a wish to remain 
in situations where reasoning and initiative need never be required ; and 
this, in turn, deprived these higher functions of the exercise needful for their 
development. The boy left school before further progress or further re- 
examination could be made. 



307 

Case VI. Boy, Age 10^. Class, Standard II. 

Intelligence Tests. Binet, 10-8. Reasoning, 10-6. Other Tests (Oppo- 
sites, Analogies, etc., with time-limit), 9-4. 

Educational Tests. Reading : Graded Vocabulary, 10-1 ; Comprehen- 
sion, 10-3; Directions, about 11-0. Spelling, 9-7. Arithmetic : Mental, 9-9 ; 
Mechanical, 8-3; Problems, 8-5; Four rules, 7-8 (practically no errors). 
Writing, Drawing, Handwork, about 11-0. Composition : amount, 8-5 ; 
quality, 0-5. 

Psychological Tests. Visual and auditory acuity : good. Motor control : 
slow but good. Imagery : visual, good ; auditory, average. Visual analysis 
and report : slightly above average. Visual recognition : slightly below 
average. Logical memory : very good. Immediate mechanical memory : 
good (repeats twenty-four syllables and seven numbers correctly in all three 
trials. Draws designs correctly from memory). Long-distance memory : 
poor. Speed tests : very poor (pronounced sensory type in reaction -time 
experiments. Only gives twenty-eight words in three minutes. Builds one 
sentence in three words, but requires nearly two minutes. Fails to count 
backwards, because he reasons out the reverse order. Cannot name months 
correctly in fifteen seconds). 

Diagnosis. In general intelligence, this boy is equal to, if not above, 
the average level for his age. But his speed of reaction in almost every 
form of activity is extremely slow ; and his rote-memory feeble. Hence, 
in the formal subjects of the school curriculum, he appears, upon a super- 
ficial view, to be extremely backward, especially in arithmetic ; and has, 
in consequence, been kept back in a class lower than his general intelligence 
and reasoning powers would warrant. There is perhaps a slight tempera- 
mental complication : an outward appearance of emotional apathy and 
lethargy seems to over-compensate for a repressed excitability. 

It should be noted that the Binet-Simon tests give no direct evidence 
of the memory defect, since in them the reproduction experiments are aD 
of the immediate form. 

Treatment. To be promoted as rapidly as possible to a class more nearly 
level with his age. A special allowance of time in class to enable him to work 
his arithmetical exercises correctly. Special exercises for speed ; and, as an 
experiment, a course of training in memory. More reliance to be placed on 
his excellent reasoning powers — e.g., in teaching, spelling, and arithmetical 
rules ; but constant drill and revision for tables and spelling. Freer discipline. 

Progress (after one year). Speed in arithmetic much improved (nearly 
two years' progress in twelve months with test of "four rules "). Little or 
no improvement in rote memory as such ; but defects in mechanical long- 
distance memory less noticeable owing to a constant tendency to exploit 
ingenious mnemonic devices, largely home-made, but perhaps encouraged 
by efforts at " memory training." Rivalry and efforts to beat his own record 
have proved powerful motives. Now appears fit for standard V. ; and in 
Binet tests and reasoning tests is grading half a year in advance of his 
calendar age. 

(iv) WRITING. 

Tests of ability in handwriting have to do with at least two distinguish- 
able aspects : first, with speed ; and, secondly, with quality — a term which 
will here include, not legibility only, but general aesthetic character as 
well. 



30S 

(a) Speed of Writing. 

[Test 15.] 

With nearly every form of activity it is possible, in testing a given 
individual, to measure maximum speed -with greater certainty than 
average or ordinary speed. In handwriting, therefore, speed may be tested 
most effectively at its highest. The examiner will require the children 
to write, as rapidly as they can, some sentence that they know by heart ; 
and will afterwards count the number of letters written by them in a given 
time. In the exercises here reported, the sentence set consisted of the first 
line of the nursery jingle — "Mary had a little lamb" ; the time-limit was 
two minutes. Pencils and singly ruled paper were employed throughout ; 
and all were instructed to begin a fresh line with each repetition of the word 
" Mary." To avoid hesitation through ignorance of spelling, children below 
the level of standard IV., before the test began, first copied the words from 
the blackboard, letter by letter, at the head of their papers. 1 

The results are tabulated on page 407 (Table LV). The figures represent 
the total amount written in the period of two minutes. To obtain the rate 
in terms of letters per minute, the figures should be halved. 

The sex-difference, which I have already noted as existing even in 
mixed schools, 2 is here strongly marked. The girls write faster at every age. 

Between normals and defectives there is an unusual amount of over- 
lapping. In this test, therefore, a margin of 50 per cent, should be allowed 
on either side of the nominal borderline. At age ten, for example, sixty is 
given as the borderline. But several defectives of ten can write over ninety 
letters in the time allotted ; while even a right-handed normal of that age 
may be found who fails in the same time to write thirty. 

(b) Quality of Writing. 

[Test 16.] 

Excellence of handwriting is a qualitative characteristic ; and, as such, 
can be measured in quantitative form only by recourse to some statistical 
device. Two principles may be adopted, either separately or in combination : 
first, that of analytic marking ; and, secondly, that of general impression. 
According to the one, marks will first be assigned to particular features 
enumerated upon some prearranged scheme — letter formation, general neat- 
ness, uniformity of slope, and so forth ; and the total score will be taken as 
measuring the child's performance. According to the other principle, the per- 
formance will be judged in its entirety, and compared with some standardised 
sample or set of samples — marks being awarded as the whole cumulative im- 
pression suggests that its merit approaches, or falls short of, the standard. 

Upon an elaboration and a blend of both principles the scale annexed 
is based. The children were required to write, as carefully as possible, in ink 
upon unruled paper, first, a prescribed sentence containing all the letters of 
the alphabet ; and, next, all the capital letters in order. The scripts written 

f 1 ) In Starch's American investigation (Jourii. Educ. Psych., VI., 2, 1915, pp. 106 et seq.) the same speci- 
men was used for both speed and quality. The children were enjoined to write as well and as rapidly as 
they could. Two minutes were allowed for the test. 

In my own earlier measurements of handwriting (Journ. Exp. Fed., I., 2, 1911, pp. 98 et sea.), as in the 
more recent and more extensive tests carried out by Dr. Kimmins [Child Study, IX., 5, 1916, p. 63), the 
children were required to write for five minutes. With maximum speed, however, wrist fatigue very rapidly 
supervenes, if the test is prolonged for such a period. 

Norms obtained under such different conditions differ greatly. Average speed is by definition slower 
than maximum speed. But the shortness of the period in such experiments as Starch's considerably 
increases the apparent rate. 

( 2 ) J. Exp. Ped., loc. cit., p. 111. Cf. also ibid., I., 5, p. 371, " The Mental Differences between the Sexes." 



309 

by children of the same age were then, first of all, ranked in order of general 
legibility ; where general legibility appeared approximately equal, they were 
ranked in order of general aesthetic merit ; where both legibility and aesthetic 
merit, judged hitherto by general impression, appeared approximately equal, 
the samples were compared in certain detailed aspects taken one by one ; 
and the sample excelling in a majority of these aspects was rated most 
highly. 

From the whole series thus graded nine specimens were then extracted : 
(1) the first or best ; (2) the last or worst ; (3) the middle specimen or 
50th per cent, in the whole series (the " median ") ; (4) the middle specimen 
of the upper half of the series (the 25th per cent., or "upper quartile," 
marking a distance of 1 X p.e. above the median or average ) ; (5) the 
middle specimen of the lower half of the series (the 75th per cent., or " lower 
quartile," marking a distance of 1 X p.e. below the median) ; (6) the 10th 
per cent. ; (7) the 91st per cent. ; (8) the 3rd per cent. ; and (9) the 98th 
per cent., representing respectively 2 x p.e. above and below, and 3 x p.e. 
above and below, the median. 1 

We thus secure scales for measuring individuals of a given year in terms 
of the average and variability of their own age-group. Since the unit of 
variability is the same throughout the scale, it may be assumed that the 
intervals between successive specimens are equal. 

The publication, however, of nine specimens for every age space forbids. 
Accordingly, the medians alone are reproduced. As a matter of fact, the 
poorer specimens of the highest ages are, in the main, comparable with 
median specimens of certain lower ages. Adjacent age-groups overlap 
enormously. The median for one age falls nearly always between 1 x p.e. 
and 2 x p.e. below the median for the age above. Hence, for rough purposes, 
we may content ourselves with one continuous scale measuring children of 
all years, instead of a number of distinct p.e. scales, each allotted to a different 
year. The samples reproduced in Figures 43 to 52 are selected from manu- 
scripts written by children themselves ; and represent median or typical 
specimens for each age. By a comparison, therefore, with these illustrations, 
the teacher can broadly assign to any given pupil a mental age for handwriting. 

The comparison is to be made according to the procedure already de- 
scribed. The criteria are, first, legibility ; secondly, general aesthetic quality ; 
thirdly, superiority in specific aspects or details (for which, see schedule 
below). For comparisons in respect of the last criterion the specimens here 
given are barely adequate. A single example cannot be expected to depart 
from a model of perfection to exactly the same extent in every detail. 
Further, for different types of calligraphy perfect models would themselves 
deviate from the particular types upon which the specimens printed below 
were based. It follows, therefore, that the teacher should himself construct 
his own scale, inserting, if possible, separate series for different aspects — for 
slant, size, heaviness, spacing, and the like. 2 Such a detailed scale, with the aid 
of the schedule on page 310, will facilitate, not merely the measurement of the 
general level of a pupil's handwriting, but also the diagnosis of his particular 
faults ; and, if the comparison be renewed from time to time, will stimulate 
an improvement in the details thus brought into focus. For repeated or 

l 1 ) "P.e." denotes "probable error," or "quartile deviation." 1 X p.e. = 0-6745 X S.D., the two 
expressions— quartile deviation and standard deviation — being different units for measuring the same thing, 
namely, the average degree to which the individual members vary above and below the average for their 
group. The reader unversed in statistical terminology will note that half of the entire age-group falls 
between the limits marked by (4) and (5), i.e., between plus and minus 1 x p.e. from the median. 

( a ) As soon as the new " manuscript " hand has been established a sufficient time, a scale for this will 
become imperative, since here the age-averages are far above what would be expected from the specimens 
appended below for the cursive style. 



310 

comparative records the headings of the schedule may be made the basis of a 
score-card, which will enable pupil as well as teacher to locate flaws and 
chronicle progress. 

To the teacher whose faith is in practical experience, such methods will 
savour of exaggerated pedantry. Their use may be defended by reference 
to their admitted value in other fields of observation. In judging grain and 
live-stock, for example, farmers and agriculturists have for long used detailed 
schedules and score-cards to secure more accurate and precise results. And 
what is not too elaborate for adjudicating the points of cattle is surely not 
too refined for measuring the capacities of children. 

SCHEDULE V. 

1 „. Analysis of Quality of Handwriting. 

(a) Too small. (6) Too large, (c) Not uniform, {d) Variations in 
specific types of letters (capitals, letters looped above, below, etc.). (e) 
Variations in specific parts of the specimen (ends of words, etc.). 

2. Slant. 

(a) Too sloping, (b) Too upright (for the style adopted), (c) Sloping 
backward, {d) Not uniform, (e) Variations in specific types of letters. 
(/) Variations in specific parts of the specimen (ends of line, of page, etc.). 

3. Line. 

(a) Too heavy. (6) Too thin, (c) Irregular, (d) Up- and down- 
strokes insufficiently distinguished, (e) Small unintentional deviations 
(tremulous, jerky, etc.). (/) Larger, intentional deviations (crooked 
backs, etc.). 

4. Alignment. 

(a) Irregularity of bottoms of small letters, (b) Of tops of small 
letters, (c) Of specific types of letters (capitals, loops, i-dot, etc.). (d) 
Of specific parts of specimen (dropping of end of line, etc.). 

5. Spacing of Lines. 

(a) Too close. (6) Too wide, (c) Not uniform, (d) Affecting specific 
types of letters (confusion of loops and tails of adjacent lines), (e) 
Affecting specific parts of specimen (crowding at bottom of page). 

6. Spacing of Words. 

(a) Too close, (b) Too far apart, (c) Not uniform, (d) Specific 
tendencies (joining certain words, or certain final letters, to following 
words, etc.). 

7. Spacing of Letters. 

(a) Too close, (b) Too wide, (c) Not uniform, (d) Variations in 
specific letters (capitals, etc., separated from rest of word), (e) Varia- 
tions in specific parts of specimen (crowding at end of line). 
■s 8. Formation of Letters. 

(a) General form, (b) Smoothness of curves, (c) Parts omitted. 
(d) Parts added, (e) Parts not joined. (/) Specific letters and parts of 
letters (capitals, loops, dotting i, crossing t, junctions, etc.). 
9. General arrangement. 

(a) Margins — top, bottom, left and right, (b) Centring (of headings 
etc.). (c) Indentation of paragraphs, etc. 

10. Neatness. 

(a) Erasures, (b) Blots and smudges, (c) General carefulness. 

11. Posture. 

Position — (a) of pen ; (&) of hand ; (c) of paper ; (d) of body. 






311 

To obtain comparative tables for quality of writing, every child's paper 
has been compared with the median samples and assigned a mental age. 
The averages and standard deviations given in Table LV1 are expressed 
in terms of these mental ages. The girls, it will be seen, write a fairer hand 
than the boys. Between normals and defectives the difference is compara- 
tively small. 

Left-handedness. 

For backwardness in handwriting, which is itself so often attended 
by backwardness in drawing, handwork, and other manual subjects, an 
illustrative case will be found, described in detail, on page 329 below. And 
here, in place of systematic analyses of further instances, I prefer rather to 
illustrate more particularly the two commoner causes of disability in this 
direction — namely, left-handedness, and choreic (or quasi-choreic) motor 
inco-ordination. 

In assessing a child's handwriting, either for speed or for quality, it is 
important to consider whether he may not be left-handed. The frequency 
of left-handedness is far commoner than is generally supposed. In the schools 
tested I have found the following percentages : — 

TABLE XXXVII. 
Incidence of Left-handedness among Normals and Defectives. 





Ordinary Elementary Schools. 


Special (M.D.) Schools 


Boys 


. . 6-2 per cent. 


13-5 per cent. 


Girls 


..3-9 


10-3 


Average 


..5-1 


H-9 



By left-handedness I mean a natural tendency (whether congenital, or 
induced post-natally by accident or other changes in the hand or its neuro- 
muscular apparatus) to undertake new dexterities with the left hand rather 
than with the right. The criterion used, therefore, was not merely the 
habitual method of using the pencil or pen, but the power to deal cards, to 
throw or pick up a ball, to cut with a knife or scissors, to hammer or bore, 
to turn a handle or wind cotton round a reel, more easily with the one hand 
than with the other. Of children thus convicted of left-handedness, only 
64 per cent, among the girls and 81 per cent, among the boys appeared to 
use the left hand to write with at school. Hence, judged by a writing test 
alone, the percentage of left-handed children would appear too small ; and, 
moreover, would seem to decrease enormously with age. 

Owing, therefore, to the ambiguity of the term and the frequency of 
the phenomenon, I decided not to eliminate left-handed children before 
undertaking my calculations or making my samples ; but only to require 
the child to write with whichever hand he could write fastest and best. 

I may draw attention to the fact that left-handedness appears far 
commoner among boys than among girls — being, indeed, among normal 
children in the infants' school almost twice as common with males as with 
females. Boys, however, appear to correct, or to grow out of, this habit 
somewhat more readily than girls. Left-handedness is more than twice as 
common among defectives as among normals. But it is by no means rare 
among bright and imaginative children of emotional disposition. Its inci- 
dence, indeed, seems greater among those children who are temperamentally 
neurotic, whether normal, supernormal, or defective in general intelligence. 
It is among this limited group that the premature enforcement of right- 
handed activities appears to conduce to stammering ; and, as a rule, 



312 

stammering is but one, although the most conspicuous, of several consequent 
disturbances in the more delicate adjustments of the nervous system. Of 
the left-handed children examined by me, 9-1 per cent, actually showed 
some such defect of speech at the time ; and nearly twice as many, 15-4 per 
cent., were reported to have stammered or stuttered in the past. Of the 
9-1 per cent., four out of five were demonstrably of a neurotic or unstable 
type ; and such a condition — in some instances, it must be admitted, appear- 
ing rather as a consequence than as a cause of the speech defect — was 
inferred or suspected in nine out of ten. 

It is important, therefore, that the nervous left-handed child should 
not be forced to use his right hand at an early age. Since the apparatus of 
civilisation is arranged for a right-handed populace, the teacher will do well 
in most other cases to encourage right-handedness before the opposite habit 
has become too firmly fixed ; but such efforts ought to be discontinued 
immediately, should any neurotic symptoms arise. The seemingly left- 
handed child, who is not so much dexterous with the left hand, as gauche 
with both left and right, is an evident case for right-handed training. But 
with the child who not only proves genuinely left-handed, but also appears 
left-legged, left-eyed, and generally (as it is sometimes wrongly put) left- 
brained, such training is, as a rule, utterly profitless. 

A connected feature of handwriting which sometimes causes anxiety to 
the young child's teacher is inverted writing or mirror-script (see Figure 39). 
Of mirror-script the most notable and most sustained example is to be 
discovered in the quaint and cryptic-looking notes left to posterity by 
Lionardo da Vinci. His manuscripts are, almost every one of them, written 
from right to left, more Hebraeorum (see Figure 39, A, (4)). Reflected in a 
glass they can be readily deciphered. It is said that in his later years, if 
not before, he suffered from a partial paralysis that afflicted his right hand ; 
and presumably, to write his hieroglyphic manuscripts, he used the left. 

There are very few school-children, who, when first beginning to write 
or print, do not from time to time reverse their letters : b and d, q and p, 
which form mirror-images of one another, and N, S, Z, which to the un- 
analytical eye appear symmetrical (like A, H, I, M, 0, T, U, V, W, X, and Y) 
but yet in fact are not, these are the characters that most frequently become 
reversed. Both here and in other tasks, lateral directions, as right and left 
or East and West, are always more readily confused than vertical directions, 
as up and down or (on the map) North and South. And in writing, the rarer 
vertical inversions, and the commoner lateral reversals seem alike attribut- 
able to an independent functioning of the nervous centres for visual or motor 
control. The successive movements, with their varying changes of direction, 
are all or nearly all of them, relatively to one another, correctly performed ; 
but the absolute orientation of the whole result upon the page is wrong — 
either because the child starts with his pen from an incorrect point {e.g., 
upon the line instead of above it — (cf. Figure 39, B, (5)) — or to wards the right- 
hand margin instead of towards the left — (cf . Figure 39, A, (3)), or else because 
the whole motor mechanism, being arranged symmetrically rather than 
similarly for opposite sides of the body, unwinds itself, as it were, automatic- 
ally, or by ingrained habit, without special guidance, either preceding or 
concurrent, by a visual image or by a schematic visual apprehension — (cf . 
Figure 39, A, (3) and (4)). 

As a transitory phase mirror-script is far commoner among normal chil- 
dren in the infants' school than is ordinarily believed ; as a rule, however, it 
persists only for a few days or weeks. It is chiefly, but by no means entirely, to 
be seen among left-handed children, particularly those who have learnt to 
write with their right hand. It is far commoner among girls. In the special 






313 



Figure 39. 

Examples of Mirror- Script and Inverted Writing. 

[Written in course of ordinary class work by Left Handed Normals 

with the Right Hand, except 
A (3) {written at request with the Left Hand) and presumably, A (4).] 

A. Lateral Inversion ("Mirror Writing"). [To read, hold this 
and the following pages before a mirror]. 



1. Girl, aged 7y> 



Gr^WvjtA.b 



l 8 




2, Boy, aged 5^, 




J : o 










314 



3. Girl, aged 12\%. (Backward in all but handwork.) 



sJbTS'YW?»o3& "N^^^^^k/^ 



3^3£k ^ Jt~^ C*K ^Sl 



fX?N^ qQ 'ty^S^Ts tWO 



4. Lionardo da Vinci (b. 1452), Dell' Anatomia (Windsor MSS. Fogli 
B. 15 recto. Compare also Arundel MS. 263, exhibited as No. 42 in Case XI 
in the Manuscript Saloon of the British Museum). 

-*d& j5y\A-ftf *rt -H.A J jvrr f-/ 



/YY 



[Reads "a b sono musscoli ul|timi latitudinali [che]|e panichuli 
[di] ne q|li [i.e., quali] essi si covertano pa|s(s)a con angolo retto 
sot | to i longitudinali am"; i.e., "a b are the last latitudinal muscles 
[that], and the membranes [from] into which they change pass at right 
angles beneath the longitudinal (muscles) a m."] 



315 



B. Vertical Inversion ("Inverted Writing"). 

5. Boy, aged 63%. (The name should read " J. Stacey.") 



2 1 S 



^ 



c 



t txr^k 





6. Girl, aged 6 T 4 ^. (Should read : "The man came to Johnnie.") 



Note to Figure 40 overleaf. 

It will be found instructive to examine the characteristics of the specimens point by point according 
to the details enumerated in Schedule V, p. 310. Observe more particularly (1) the general irregularity of 
size and slope ; (2) the irregular and excessive thickening of the down-strokes, especially where effort is marked ; 
(3) the highly irregular alignment ; (4) the irregular spacing of letters — lateral wrist movements being usually 
excessive, but occasionally insufficient, and so producing a sprawling hand with occasionally crowded strokes ; 
(5) inco-ordinate and often incomplete letter-formation, due especially to jerky strokes and a fine tremor 
(the spasmodic movements are particularly noticeable in the loops and at the beginnings and ends of the 
letters ; and sometimes carry the nib completely off the page) ; (6) blots, smudges, and corrections ; (7) 
attempted control is sometimes successful, but often simply increases the involuntary movements : in the 
effort, the penholder is rigidly grasped, and the first child steadies the right thumb with the knuckles of the 
left hand. 

In the reproductions overleaf the finer and more tremulous up-strokes and side-strokes appear, upon the 
present paper, somewhat thicker and firmer than the originals. Signs of tremor can thus be distinguished 
only by close inspection. 

It should be noted that samples from choreic, and indeed from nervous and unstable children generally, 
vary greatly from day to day and from week to week. For example, a boy aged ten was brought to me by his 
father on account of periodic fits of wandering and uncontrollability. On examining his old exercise books 
at school I found that he also showed periodic fits of bad work, the variations being most conspicuous in his 
handwriting. Here one page might be as well written as that of a child of eleven ; another worse than that of 
a child of seven. And the aberrations in writing synchronised very closely, over the whole of the preceding 
year, with the aberrations in behaviour. (Cf. the neurotic delinquent described above, p. 293, footnote (*) ad 
fin.). These instances show how fallacious it is, especially in temperamental cases, to draw final generalisa- 
tions, as regards either handwriting or any other subject, from a single cross-section of the mind taken at one 
momeDt only. 



316 



bo 

e 



a. 
S 

eft 
X 




317 

(M.D.) schools examined by me, 7- 1 per cent, of the boys and 13-6 per cent, of 
the girls showed a tendency to mirror- writing in certain letters or figures, or 
under certain conditions {e.g., where required to write with the left hand, or 
to commence at the right-hand margin of the page ; compare sample 3 of 
Figure 39). Teachers report that the spontaneous dropping of such 
peculiarities, and particularly the spontaneous change from left hand to right 
hand in writing and drawing, frequently concurs with a marked acceleration 
in general progress both among young normals and among defectives. 1 

Next to left-handedness, the commonest cause of backwardness in hand- 
writing is to be sought in the motor inco-ordinations, nervous in origin, that 
characterise chorea and more general forms of emotional instability. In 
Figure 40 I append in facsimile two typical specimens of choreic script. With 
children of hysterical constitution, slovenliness in handwriting, like im- 
patience of spelling (see above, page 293), is often traceable by psycho- 
analysis to what I may call a deep-rooted anti-neatness complex, dating 
from infancy. To the same complex Dr. Ernest Jones has ascribed " the 
tendency to reverse letters and words in writing" among adults. 2 

(v) DRAWING. 

[Test 17.] 
" Painting," says one of Wilde's characters, " is a mode of autobiography 
invented for the use of the illiterate." Drawing, it might with equal truth 
ybe added, is a mode of self -revelation peculiarly adapted to those who cannot 
Vexpress their mental powers through the usual media of writing and speech." 
Tests of drawing come thus to be among the most valuable we possess. They do 
not, indeed, in my experiments, show such high correlations with intelligence 
or educational ability as are evinced by some of the foregoing tests, or, indeed, 
as have been claimed by early enthusiasts who deduced a priori what they 
could not discover by statistics. Nevertheless, they have one advantage 
over most of our other tests, whether tests of intelligence or tests of attain- 
ments : they do not depend upon an acquired power to manipulate abstract - 
symbols, such as words or numbers. They are not linguistic ; they are not z 
arithmetical. On the contrary, they open avenues to strange places in the 
childish mind, provinces that otherwise would remain untouched and un- 
explored. Drawing gives a penetrating glimpse into the child's powers of 
imagination and construction — of imagination, in terms of real things visual- *-■ 
ised, rather than of mere words uttered ; of construction, in the sense of 
self-expression through the hand as guided by the eye. Unlike most tests 
of manual construction — modelling, building, and handwork generally — it has 
two unique inducements : it requires no special apparatus, and brings with it 
no special perplexities in marking for quality and in standardising samples. 
A picture gallery of sketches, all dealing with the same subject, all executed 
by the same individual as year by year he passes from infancy to adolescence, 
will provide a valuable and vivid self-history which all can understand, a 
memoir (as it were) of the growing artist's mind, of his mental, manual, and 
imaginative development. Nor will such a collection be without interest to 
the child himself. If the drawings are bound by each young draughtsman ) 
into a portfolio of his own, which shall not be too ruthlessly handed round 
by the teacher for the' delectation of visitors, then an unfailing spur to 

t 1 ) On the whole subject, see the recent and admirable paper by Dr. James Kerr ("Left-handedness 
and Mirrored Writing," School Hygiene, Feb. and May, 1920). I may also refer to the excellent article by 
Dr. Ballard ("Sinistrality and Speech," J. Exp. Ped., I.. 1912, pp. 298 et seq.) and to the newer researches 
of Mr. Hugh Gordon ("Left-handedness and Mental Deficiency," Brit. Psych. Soc. (Educ. Sect.). Abstract 
of paper read May 12, 1920. See also Brain, XLIV., March, 1921). 

( 2 ) Papers in Psycho- Analysis, 2nd ei„ p. 675. 



318 

progress will be derived from the natural efforts of the child to beat his own 
best record. 

Quality of drawing I have sought to measure upon principles akin to 
those laid down for quality of handwriting. The children were asked to 
" draw a man." No time-limit was enforced. This subject was selected for 
several reasons : first, it is seldom practised in school ; secondly, as previous 
studies have shown, the sketches at different ages are distinguished by fairly 
definite peculiarities, and these peculiarities in turn reflect the outstanding 
features of drawing generally in its several and successive phases ; thirdly, 
during the greater portion of the school period every child delights to draw 
the human figure, and no child doubts its ability to do so. 

I would not venture, with Buskin, to contend that in lessons upon 
drawing the child's practice should be limited to exercises purely voluntary 
and spontaneous. 1 But I may perhaps urge that, both for teaching and for 
y testing, instructors of the art might, in a more liberal measure, exploit the 
natural interests of the younger child, and introduce at an earlier stage human 
and animal subjects. Occasional practice, indeed, in the tracing of lines and 
curves, of geometrical designs and decorative arabesques, has its value for 
teaching ; and even for testing I have found endeavours to reproduce an 
intricate geometrical pattern correlate highly with intelligence, if not with 
drawing ability. Such a task, with its demand for visual analysis and 
synthesis, resembles the Porteus maze tests ; and, like them, accommodates 
itself very readily to an age grading. But, for a rapid test of drawing ability 
as such, a subject with an instinctive appeal is far more effective. Indeed, not 
infrequently a child, previously rated as incompetent both in school subjects 
generally and in the traditional work of the drawing class, discovers an un- 
suspected vein of talent, when assayed with a test that gives his native 
powers and interests a fuller scope and freer play. 

As in quality of writing, so for quality of drawing, an age-scale may be 
formed by selecting the median sample from each year. A series of such 
samples is reproduced below (Figures 53 to 64, pages 383 to 394). It pro- 
vides a graphic illustration of the pictorial evolution of man as mirrored 
from year to year in the developing mind of the child. 

Merely to compare by general impression a given drawing with such 
an age-scale is, of course, a gross and clumsy method of weighing its merit. 
With a view, therefore, to more exact measurements, I have, in drawing as 
in writing, compiled, for each year separately, scales in terms of the quartile 
deviation (" probable error ") ; and have constructed a schedxile of character- 
istics to be compared. Unfortunately, space precludes a reproduction of the 
separate year-scales and of any detailed schedule here. Every teacher who 
desires to measure drawing capacity with precision should himself attempt 
such scales for all the commoner objects drawn in school. The scales would in 
turn suggest analytic schedules enumerating those technical details in which 
weaknesses most frequently appear, and upon which teaching might most 
profitably be concentrated. 

Progress in drawing shows successive changes in kind as well' as in 
degree. It resembles, not so much the uniform accretions of the inanimate 
crystal, as the spasmodic growth of some lowly organism, one whose life- 
history is a fantastic cycle of unexpected metamorphoses. Each advance 
follows a different line from the last. If, for every age, the investigator collects, 
instead of one solitary sample, a typical set all approximately median, and 
then compares his age-groups serially, he becomes quickly sensible of a well- 
defined course of development, which moves, not merely from a low grade 

M The Elements of Drawing, 3rd ed., p. ix. 



319 

through higher grades to the highest, but from one unique phase to another, 
through a series of transformations marked, no less characteristically, by 
distinct and determinate features. The several stages have been studied 
and described, with some disagreement in detail, by American investigators. 
And, amid certain peculiarities not unexpected (among others a slight pre- 
cocity) — all attributable to differences in childish experiences and in teaching 
methods, much the same phases reappear in age-scales derived from the 
drawings of London children. Confined as they are to a single sample from 
each successive year, the half-dozen pictures printed below can afford but 
a meagre notion of this evolution. I may, therefore, pardonably append a 
more detailed commentary in words. To those already apprised of previous 
work upon this subject what I have to say will be far from new. Nevertheless, 
the leading points deserve reiteration. They illustrate most aptly how 
experiments at successive ages unfold the line of mental progress ; they 
demonstrate most vividly how instruction in drawing, in spite of recent 
reforms, is still based upon logical principles deduced a priori, instead of 
upon generic principles gathered from observation at first hand. 

For convenience, I may perhaps mark off some six or seven distinguish- 
able steps. There is, however, no sudden transition or break. One phase 
glides imperceptibly into the next, as dawn passes into morning and morning 
into noon. From the items enumerated in my description the enquiring 
teacher will find it easy to reconstruct the schedule I have used. If then 
for every age he calculates the percentage among the drawings in school 
that show each of the features specified, he will arrive at a suggestive cross- 
tabulation, which will depict, more precisely than any words could do, the 
artistic progress of the children in his charge. Upon a similar tabulation 
(which, I hope, may be submitted later, when the data are more complete) 
the following generalisations are, for the most part, based : — 

(1) The first stage may well be named the stage of scribble. As 
expression through speech begins with half -automatic cries and babblings, 
so graphic expression begins with half -automatic scratching and scrawling of 
pencil upon paper. The scribbling stage may begin as early as the age of 2 — ; 
it often swells to an eager interest about the age of 3 — ; and may persist, even 
for some months after the child has entered the infants' school, until about the 
end of the child's fifth year. To teachers the details of this stage are familiar 
rather from the products of low-grade defectives than from those of younger 
normals. In both the general trend is much the same. 

The whole stage may be subdivided into three or four component 
periods. The phase begins with (a) a period of purposeless pencillings y 
enjoyed chiefly for the muscular movement, which, significantly enough, is 
first made usually from right to left. This leads to (&) a period of more 
purposive pencilling, in which the results themselves become a centre of 
attention, and may be given a description or a name as chance likeness or 
fanciful caprice dictates. At the third period (c) the pencillings are imitative, 
mimicking the adult draughtsman's general movements more often than copy- 
ing any drawn original or natural model. Through all these periods a study of 
the products of such scribbling indicates, what direct observation of the child 
at work confirms, that motion is being gradually refined : wrist-movements 
come to dominate over arm-movements, finger -movements over wrist-move- 
ments. But the overmastering interest is still muscular rather than visual; 
there is as yet but small control by sight. Towards the mental age of four, 
the scribbling becomes, as it were, {d) localised (Figure 54 ; cf. also Figure 53). 
The child seeks to reproduce specific parts of the subject of his drawing. 
He scratches first this portion, then that portion, regardless of their rela- 
tive disposition within the whole ; and rarely so much as approaches an 



320 

exhaustive enumeration of all the essential parts. At first the scrawl may be 
quite unrecognisable without the aid of the child's own utterances, as he works 
now at this feature, now at that. Here, as everywhere in child-study, it is 
of the utmost importance, not only to scrutinise the finished product, but 
also to observe the child in the act of creation ; his ways must be watched 
as well as his works. The phase of localised scribbling is, however, a tran- 
sitional period leading to the next stage. 

(2) Usually by the age of four an increasing tendency has emerged to 
limit activity to single movements, instead of making rhythmically repeated 
oscillations ; and so to produce single lines, often admirably continuous 
and firm, in place of massive scribbling (Figure 54 ; cf. also Figure 55). This, 
then, is a stage of line, though hardly yet of form. The change, of course, 
is greatly affected by instruction at home or at school. 1 Visual control is 
manifest, at first sporadically, and then with a steady progress. The scrawls 
come slowly to resemble definite objects. The favourite subject has now 
become, even more exclusively than before, the human figure ; and the 
drawing soon begins to show (Figure 54) almost invariably a rude circle for 
the head ; nearly as frequently a pair of dots for the eyes ; usually a pair 
of single lines to represent the legs ; more rarely a second rude circle for 
the body ; and, more rarely still, a second pair of lines to represent the arms ; 
feet, indeed, which are found in nearly 50 per cent, of my drawings at four, 
and in over 90 per cent, at five, appear earlier than body and arms. The 
eyes may be placed outside the circumference of the face (Figure 54) ; the 
arms may sprout from the head (Figure 55). A proper synthesis of the parts 
at this stage is usually unattainable, and often unattempted. Juxtaposition 
seems to suffice. 

(3) About the mental age of five the child enters on a period of 
descriptive symbolism (Figure 55) ; and by the age of six (Figure 56) the 
form, or at least the general plan, of the human figure is now reproduced 
with tolerable accuracy, though only as a crude symbolic scheme. There 
is little attention to the shape, and still less attention to the relative pro- 
portions of the several parts. Stiff geometrical contours still satisfy the 
child just as well as the soft irregular forms of nature (Figures 57 and 58). 
The head may be circular, oval, or square ; the body, circular, oval, square, 
triangular, or bottle-shaped. The arms and legs are represented at first by 
single lines ; but between the ages of six and seven there is an increasing 
tendency to show their contour by two lines approximately parallel. The 
several features are localised in the roughest way. Each adheres to some 
conventional form. The eye — which is always prominent — may be repre- 
sented by a dot, by a circle, by a dot in a circle, or a dot under a semicircle. 
The fingers may radiate from a point like the rays of a star, or from a line like 
the prongs of a trident ; they may be (to borrow terms from the botanist) 
crenate, lobate, palmate, or digitate. Similar conventions are employed for 
nose, mouth and feet. Knees, elbows, and neck are, until almost the end 
of the school career, conspicuously absent. Except for the addition of a 
feathered hat and a transparent skirt, the same schema does duty for woman 
as for man. Laid horizontally, with limbs appropriately rearranged, it 
serves, with equal felicity, drawn large, for a horse or a cow ; drawn small, 
for a cat or a dog. The general schema assumes with different children 
somewhat different types ; but the same child clings pretty closely, for most 
purposes and for long periods, to the same favourite pattern. If the subject to 
be drawn is before him, it matters little whether that subject — the examiner, 

(') American writers appear to over-emphasise the child's early predilection for line and outline as opposed 
to mass. The apparent difference, however, may be due in part to peculiarities of English instruction, par- 
ticularly during recent years. 



321 

for example — stands, sits, presents a full face, a profile, or his back ; the 
portrait is the same. Indeed, at this stage and during much of the next, a 
few will look at the copy or model only once ; most will not look at all. 

(4) After the child has been at school for a year or two there is an 
effort at greater realism, a realism, however, which is at first still descrip- 
tive rather than depictive, logical rather than visual. Drawing is still a 
form of silent language, not a form of art. The child sets down what he 
knows, not what he sees ; and is still thinking, not of the present individual, 
but rather of the generic type. He is trying, by his pictures, to communicate, 
or perhaps merely to express, and sometimes only, it would seem, to catalogue, 
all that he remembers, or all that interests him, in the subject to be drawn. 
He does not pretend to represent that object, as it appears to his eye in a 
single moment, or from a single point of view. Though still generalised, the 
schemata become gradually more true to detail and to fact. The items, 
however, are suggested more by the association of ideas than by the analysis 
of percepts. 

An early change, usually commencing about the age of seven, is that 
from full-face to profile (c/. Figures 57 and 58) — the face as drawn by the normal 
right-handed child turning usually to the left (Figures 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 64, 
and contrast 42). At the age of six, nearly 70 per cent, of the drawings are 
full-face ; at the age of eleven, nearly 70 per cent, will be profile. As is 
well known, all the parts do not undergo this transition at the same time 
(Figure 41). The face (as shown by the outline of the nose) turns first ; but 
for long the two eyes may be visible on the same side. Later, the body 
(as shown by the buttons) rotates to the left ; but the two arms may still 
extend in opposite directions. The drawing is thus a monstrous hybrid of 
two incompatible aspects — half profile, half full view. Some portraits, 
indeed, may show the same feature by both methods ; and thus exhibit, like 
some malformed image from Hindoo mythology, two mouths, two noses, 
and three or four gesticulating arms. 

Perspective, opacity, foreshortening, and all the consequences of single- 
ness of viewpoint, are still disregarded. Clothes are drawn ; but usually 
appear diaphanous — the outlines of the body, legs or arms shining, as it were, 
through the coat, the trouser, or the sleeve (Figure 59), the crown of the head 
through the substance of the hat (Figure 58). There is a gathering interest 
in decorative details. Buttons, hats, pipes, cigarettes, beards, moustaches, 
sticks and umbrellas, pockets and watch-chains, attract increasing notice ; 
and, as each comes to the focus of attention, it may borrow, for a while, an 
exaggerated size and a preposterous richness (Figures 59, 61, and 62). 

(5) By the age of nine or ten the increasing demand for realism brings 
with it a great improvement in technique. Hitherto the child has drawn chiefly 
from memory and imagination ; he now inclines to trace or copy the draw- 
ings made by others, and even spontaneously to draw from nature. There 
is an effort to portray the external semblance of the object as it is seen by 
an unsophisticated vision. And thus the stage of logical or descriptive realism 
yields to one of visual realism (Figures 60 and 61). The child no longer 
confounds what he knows with what he sees ; he has recovered what may be 
called the native innocence of the eye. 

We may distinguish, first, (a) a two-dimensional sub-phase. The draw- 
ing of the whole and of its parts is attempted only in outline ; and aspects 
are predominantly chosen that can be readily transferred to two dimensions 
(Figure 60). But gradually — very largely by studying or redrawing from 
copies — solidity is attempted. The figure appears at first in silhouette ; then 
in relief ; and, only after a long delay, in the round. This marks (6) a three- 
dimensional sub-phase (Figure 62). The three-quarter view is during the 

T 



322 

school period attacked but rarely. Particular types are now delineated — 
a soldier or a sailor ; later particular individuals — " Charlie Chaplin," 
" Teacher," or " King George " ; and the title may be subscribed in orna- 
mental lettering {cf. Figure 63). The figures, too, instead of floating in the 
air, are given a line or two of ground to stand on (Figure 60, et seq.), perhaps 
a background to stand up against (Figure 64). Into the better drawings 
action is freely introduced (Figure 62) ; and, later on, there are constant efforts 
seen best on a comparison of different drawings by the same individual, not 
only to characterise, but even to dramatise the subject of the sketch. 

Landscapes are now not infrequently attempted. Hitherto, endeavours 
to represent a complicated scene would produce jumbled panoramas, half 
maps, half juxtaposed vignettes, like the illustrations of the early chroniclers, 
either disregarding space altogether, or giving a curious bird's-eye view. By 
the age of eleven, however, there is considerable attention to overlapping 
and to perspective ; and later, particularly, among the brighter children, a 
little shading and an occasional foreshortening. A properly placed horizon 
is rarely to be seen before the last of the stages here to be described. 

(6) A phase of repression follows. It overtakes most children during 
the prepubertal period, somewhere between the eleventh and fourteenth 
years, setting in most commonly about the age of thirteen (Figure 63). 
With many there is a danger of arrest at an even earlier stage. Near the 
termination of school life the drawings often show an apparent deterioration 
or regression, a regression which, in my view, is by no means to be ascribed 
solely to the fact that the brightest pupils have left the elementary depart- 
ments. It is part of the child's natural development. Progress, where it 
appears, is now at best laborious and slow. The young draughtsman seems 
disillusioned and discouraged ; the confidence, the keenness, so requisite for 
realistic renderings, has left him. In some instances, at least, as analysis and 
psycho-analysis show, the repression is to be ascribed to emotional rather 
than to intellectual changes. But the factors that thus so strangely stifle 
the earlier and almost universal enthusiasm are always manifold, and some- 
times obscure : increased power of observation, increased capacity for 
aesthetic appreciation, augment, no doubt, an increasing self-consciousness 
and an increasing self-criticism, due partly to other causes. From expres- 
sion through drawing, and through movement generally, interest is transferred 
to expression through language ; and the fascination of the pencil, if it 
survive at all, lives rather in an attraction towards geometrical and purely 
ornamental art, and in a preference for conventional patterns and decorative 
designs. Among the spontaneous drawings of children, nearly 80 per cent, 
at the ages of six and seven are drawings of human figures ; the remainder 
depict animals, plants, horses, ships, and miscellaneous objects of still life ; 
conventional designs are virtually non-existent. At the ages of thirteen and 
fourteen the order of preference is almost exactly reversed : conventional 
designs are commonest ; the human figure rarest of all. 

(7) Under free and natural conditions, graphic ability tends, it would 
seem, to rise to new life during early adolescence ; and the last stage may 
be denominated one of artistic revival. The drawings are now made to 
tell a story (Figure 64) ; or, if still mere portraits, they approximate more 
to the methods of the professional artist, being, for example, limited to the 
head and shoulders instead of embracing the full length {cf. Figure 63). From 
about the age of fifteen onwards, drawing for the first time blossoms into a 
genuine artistic activity. In adolescent girls, new-found aesthetic interests 
preponderate — a love of richness in colour, of grace in form, of beauty in 
line. Among youths, the recrudescence of draughtsmanship may find a 
technical or mechanical outlet. By many, however, perhaps by most, this 



323 



Figure 41. 



Drawing by Backward Girl (Aged 7|S). 
Showing " Mixed Profile." 




The contour of the head, particularly the nose and hair, are in profile ; the 
two eyes, two arms, two legs, two rows of buttons show a front view ; note 
also, that while the nose turns to the left, the feet turn to the right; and 
there are two mouths and no ears. 



Figure 42. 
Median Sample for Mental Defectives (Age 10-). 





325 

final stage is never reached. The talented few, indeed, come to this point 
at a somewhat earlier chronological age. But it is, in my experience, not 
easy to diagnose with any certainty, among individual children, special 
artistic poweis before this phase is entered — that is, not before the calendar 
age of eleven even in the most precocious. 

Such, then, or nearly such, is the general course which the development 
of ability in drawing seems to pursue. The teacher who attempts to assign to 
a child a rough mental age for this subject will probably find it helpful to bear 
in mind the foregoing details, as well as to compare the product to be assessed 
with the samples reproduced below. It should be noted, however, that 
deviations above and below the average show other characteristics than 
those of mere immaturity or precocity in the natural line of development. 

It would not be difficult, were this the place, to deduce from these par- 
ticulars a practical body of recommendations respecting the teaching methods 
most appropriate to each age and stage. But the corollaries will be suffi- 
ciently obvious. The natural tendencies of mental growth should be followed, 
not forced ; here as elsewhere compliance rather than constraint should be 
the watchword. We have to do with an activity of such burning interest 
for the young child that some have fancied it rises from an inborn racial 
instinct ; we must beware, therefore, of cooling or dimming that ardour, or 
of allowing it to become extinguished before its full progress is achieved. 
The tedious grammar of drawing must be postponed until the need for it is 
felt ; and the child should be suffered to draw what he knows he wants to 
draw, not what we think he ought to draw. In the earlier stages we may 
assist him to a better feeling for proportion, without insisting upon rigid 
correctness or excessive symmetry ; in the latter stages we may supply him 
with copies that will lift him over the technical difficulties which he is be- 
ginning to feel and face, without, however, forcing models upon him prema- 
turely at a time when he draws rather from what he imagines than from 
what he sees. And at every stage, in drawing as in all other subjects, we 
should strive to keep slightly ahead of, but never to outdistance, the mind 
of the child as he proceeds from phase to phase. 

To obtain comparative tables for quality in drawing, the method adopted 
for quality in handwriting has again been utilised. By reference to the median 
samples, the drawing of each child has been awarded a mental age ; and 
from these mental ages the averages, standard deviations, and borderlines 
have been computed (see Table LVII). In drawing, even among normal chil- 
dren, boys are eminently superior to girls ; and among older children of special 
schools the difference is still more pronounced. Although, as I have else- 
where shown, the correlation between ability in drawing and general ability 
is, among boys, and particularly among older boys, by no means large ; yet 
among girls, and particularly among younger girls, it is in no way negligible. 1 
Of all special scholastic abilities, that which underlies drawing is (with the 
exception of music, which falls outside our present scope) the most easily 
verified. Yet among girls the specific talent for drawing is small, and plays 
but a slender part. A young girl's drawing depends largely upon her 
general ability. Consequently, for the diagnosis of intelligence, to rely, in 
part, at any rate, upon accomplishments in drawing is somewhat safer with 
a girl of eight than it would be with a boy of twelve. 

The correlation between drawing and intelligence is not altogether 
linear ; that is to say, the inferences from one capacity to the other cannot 

l 1 ) This, doubtless, is a special instance illustrating two general facts, which I have already emphasised 
above (p. 266) ; namely, that the general mental factor pervading all scholastic activities predominates in a 
greater measure, first of all, during earlier years as contrasted with later, and, secondly, among girls as com- 
pared with boys. 



326 

be drawn with equal security in either direction. Among children, intel- 
lectual ability usually connotes graphical ability ; but graphical ability does 
not necessarily connote intellectual ability. Pupils who appear most intelli- 
gent in other lessons are, as a rule, above the average in the drawing lesson ; 
on the other hand, pupils who are extremely backward in the more academic 
subjects — in reading and spelling, in arithmetic and composition — not in- 
frequently display much ability in drawing and handwork. A teacher in an 
older class containing, as he believes, many backward boys, will be tempted 
to revise his judgments concerning many of them when he has given the 
whole group a set of tests in manual dexterity. As for prediction, most 
children who show artistic talent in later life prove to have drawn well in 
earlier years. But, even by the age of eleven, there are many children whose 
latent artistic powers have not yet ripened ; and, inversely, there are many 
children whose talents, although of fair promise before the pre-adolescent 
stage is reached, experience an unforeseen repression or arrest, and so fail to 
redeem their early pledge. 

The divergences, both in merit and method, between the drawings of 
boys and girls have so impressed the earlier investigators that some of the 
most eminent 1 urge for the two sexes courses entirely separate. In my own 
investigations, it is rather the divergences already existing between the two 
courses that has been largely responsible for the divergence in the results. 
In boys' departments, for example, a greater proportion of time is allotted 
to this subject — a factor too easily overlooked by external enquirers. Thus 
the plea wears the appearance of a circular argument : the difference in the 
curricula is cited as the cause of the difference in skill ; the difference in 
skill is urged as a reason for a difference in curricula. 

In part, however, it must be owned, the sex-difference seems undeniably 
innate. It affects the drawing of subjects not taught in the drawing lesson ; 
and it affects different aspects of the drawing process in different ways. 
Girls have a keener eye for colour ; boys have a steadier hand for form. 
Girls are contented to draw still life, to sketch flowers and landscapes ; 
boys prefer scenes of activity and movement, such as games and battle- 
fields. Girls copy objects that are actually in front of them ; boys turn 
for their subjects to imagination and invention. Girls excel in delineating 
minute particulars ; boys in conveying a general impression of the whole. 
In the fulness of detail, both as regards the incidents in the story to be illus- 
trated, and as regards personal peculiarities like those of dress, girls every- 
where surpass boys. They reach the decorative stage earlier ; and are cunning 
in conventional design. On the other hand, they display less vigour, less 
humour, less originality. They are comparatively weak in the sense of pro- 
portion and in the production of perspective. They stay longer at the more 
primitive phases ; and their development is more open to a premature 
arrest. 

With either sex, particularly after the infants' department has been 
quitted, the standard deviations are high. Not only does instruction fail 
to level aptitudes ; but those natural aptitudes, by virtue of inborn indi- 
vidual peculiarities, vary unusually in their range. 

Defectives, it is often remarked, excel in drawing. Their excellence, 
however, has been over-rated. It is relative, not positive. It appears only 
when their drawings are contrasted with their own feeble performances 
in other school subjects, not when they are set beside the drawings of the 
normal child. Compared with drawings from ordinary schools, those ob- 
tained in the special school resemble the work of normal children two or 

(') Kerschensteiner, for example, at Munich. 



327 

three years younger. The majority of defectives suffer an arrest during 
what I have distinguished as the fourth period. Some never reach it. Few 
advance beyond it. 

There are, however, in the drawings of defectives special differences in 
kind and character, as well as a general deficiency in degree ; so that it is 
usually quite possible to distinguish the drawing of an older defective from 
that of a younger normal child (c/. Figure 42). These differences well deserve 
study. ^They may perhaps be most briefly epitomised by saying that the 
drawings of the defective are apt to include inconsistent features characteris- 
ing phases of development which among normals are distinct and even 
remote. Thus in the defective's portrait of the human figure the face may 
be a mixed profile, as at stage four ; the body may be a hard square, as at 
stage three ; the arms may be omitted, as at stage two. Such a composite, 
indeed, is not rare among normals. But, on to this mixed' and primitive 
scheme, the defective will fit a mass of detail which the normal child seldom 
observes until the mental age of eleven or twelve — a Hohenzollern moustache, 
buttons and pockets of unusual type or arrangement, a packet of a particular 
brand of cigarettes with the name ostentatiously displayed ; and upon and 
around the whole he may weave a profusion of rhythmic decoration for a 
background, such as a normal child rarely attempts till near the stage of 
puberty. The odd, incongruous product reminds us of those urchins who 
strut the poorer streets, clothed in the discarded garments of relatives of 
almost every age. 

The symbolic and decorative elements which, with the normal child, 
are chiefly confined to certain stages of development, are to be found at 
almost every phase in the drawings of the higher-grade defective ; and, 
owing to his greater command of the pencil, they are pushed to such bizarre 
degrees as to tinge most of the portraits with a quality of caricature. 
Schemata also tend to predominate throughout. A defective of thirteen or 
fourteen may still draw for the body a symmetrical oblong or triangle, with 
semicircles at the sides for arms, and parallel straight lines at the lower 
corners for the legs ; and, if a ruler is handy, the human figure may be 
ingeniously ruled in lines perfectly straight ; the hands may be constructed 
of rays in a fashion no less geometrical ; and in every limb and feature the 
schematic character seems almost perversely accentuated. Decoration is 
exaggerated at nearly every stage. The hair may be a chain of loops 
or curls. The clothes (which are nearly always transparent) may be covered 
with rows of buttons, or with patterns of criss-cross lines or chequered 
squares. All this grotesqueness is enhanced by the fact that the sense of 
relative size and position is extremely poor. The head may be larger than 
the body ; the arms may be as long as the entire figure. The eye, drawn 
elaborately perhaps with radiating eyelashes, may appear in the middle of 
the cheek ; and the ear below the eye. Further, there is frequently an 
impression conveyed of something unfinished ; one arm may be shaded, 
but the child has forgotten to shade the other ; and the whole figure may be 
mathematically symmetrical except for one arm or one leg, which shows a 
sudden change of schema, or perhaps is missing altogether. 

The striking feature of the defective's drawing is thus a want of pro- 
portion — a want of proportion not merely in the amount of space, but also 
in the amount of attention and labour, bestowed upon the several parts. 
The original, implicit apprehension of the whole, which, as a determining 
tendency or idee directrice, should control and harmonise the work upon the 
various portions, tends to dissolve and vanish ; and the artist is carried 
away at a tangent, to elaborate, with perverted intricacy, some subordinate 
detail that for the moment engrosses his interest. 



328 

(vi) HANDWORK. 
[Tests 18 and 19.] 

Ability in manual construction is, of all school capacities, the most 
perplexing to assess. Standing, as it does, apart from other scholastic 
activities, related, as it is, to tasks of industrial life, it is plainly a capacity 
of unusual significance. Its measurement, therefore, is a subject eminently 
suited for research by the specialist teacher. 

In the present enquiry, the test-material chiefly consisted of wooden- 
building blocks of various sizes and shapes. As with other tests, the exercise 
has taken one or other of the twin forms that constantly recur — either that 
of a qualitative test of merit or that of a quantitative test of speed. 

In the speed test (Test 18) a model of a " house," erected with a dozen 
blocks, was put before the child. He was given a duplicate set of twelve 
similar pieces ; and was asked to reproduce the model in front of him as 
quickly as he could. The time required to build an exact copy was accepted 
as the measure of his efficiency. If his first trial was inaccurate or incom- 
plete, he was instructed to continue, and eventually assisted, until the 
product was correct in every point. An error, or an inability to construct 
certain portions without help, thus counted by extending his total time. 

In the qualitative test (Test 19) the child was given thirty blocks and 
enjoined to make what he chose — the best thing he could think of. The 
product was marked for merit according to an arbitrary scale based on a 
comparison with the average productions of normal children of each age. 

Tables LVIII and LIX show the results for the two forms of the test. 
There is a striking sex-difference, particularly in that form of the test which 
calls for the spontaneous invention of an original design. The boys are 
quicker and more creative. The difference between normals and defectives 
of the same age, compared with that discovered in most of the preceding 
tests, is small. Indeed, so great is the overlapping that the formulation of 
a borderline would be grossly misleading. 1 

For the measurement of individual children, as distinct from the calcu- 
lation of averages, the test, in both its forms, proved highly unsatisfactory. 
Often, from one day to another, a child's time in the speed test and his marking 
in the qualitative test would fluctuate widely. A model of a dozen pieces, too, 
which young children and defectives can put together, seemed far too simple 
to, elicit individual differences of ability among older normal children. For 
the latter I have preferred to take some plates and bolts from a meccano 
outfit, or a dozen interlocking strips from a set of miniature building planks ; 
and then to require, as before, first a timed reconstruction from a pattern, 
and afterwards an original design. But with all forms of material bought 
from toy-shops the child's performances are influenced by previous practice — 
by work or play with bricks, blocks, clay, building apparatus, and similar 
media at home or at school. 

For more recent experiments, therefore, I have assembled materials of 
a more homely and more varied form — match-sticks, woe den discs made 
from cotton reels, pieces of tin, strips, sticks, and blocks of different sizes, 
and a little plasticine so small in amount that it is available for joining 
rather than for modelling. 2 The pieces have been so selected that fairly 

l 1 ) Owing to the time occupied by this test and the numerous modifications introduced in the endeavour 
to improve it, the figures given are based upon very slender numbers — about fifty cases for each age-group 
among both normals and defectives. Further, since the weakest individuals among the lowest ages failed 
entirely to reproduce the model or to construct a design of their own, it has been necessary here, as in analogous 
instances occurring more rarely in other tests, to deduce approximate averages and standard deviations from 
the median and quartiles and the general form of the curve of distribution. 

( 2 ) In the most recent form the wood and metal are bored and pointed for junction. This makes the 
suggestion of designs still more limited and specific ; and eliminates the possible effects of familiarity with 
plasticine. 



329 

definite objects, ranging from a three-legged stool to a four-wheeled waggon, 
suggest themselves for construction. By photographing a number of median ' 
samples for each age, the marking can be rendered reasonably objective. 
The whole task turns more upon ingenuity than upon familiarity with pur- 
chased toys ; and familiarity with any one particular medium is discounted 
by the great variety. Apart from direct instruction in toy-making, a child 
is likely to have had experience in such rough and varied materials, only if 
he has himself, by virtue of a native interest or inborn talent, exploited the 
possibilities of household odds and ends in making playthings at home. 

To present this or, indeed, any other test of original construction in 
sufficient detail for practical use would need many pages of print, and many 
illustrations of typical products. But the tests remain as yet in an experi- 
mental form and at a tentative stage. Consequently, a full description here 
would hardly be justified. This composite material, however, seems to point 
to the most profitable direction for future research. 

In assessing handwork for girls I have commonly made use of the same 
material as I have employed for boys. With girls, however, I have also 
attempted, upon a more limited plan, tests of ability to sew. After several 
experiments it appeared that a practical scale of sewing ability was best 
limited to speed and neatness in making a few simple, standard stitches with 
some simple, standard material. The construction of completed articles — 
handkerchiefs, bags, and garments — was found to involve a test far more 
lengthy and far less reliable. The children were accordingly required to 
hem, gather, oversew, and back-stitch pieces of calico ; and median samples 
for each age were selected as before. The ability to sew, however, depends 
so largely upon practice and instruction, and is, in consequence, so much 
more limited in diagnostic significance, that again I give no detailed results. 1 

Case Illustrative of Backwardness in Handwork. 

Case, VII. Boy, Age 12y\. Glass, Standard VI. 

Intelligence Tests. Binet, 10-6 (fails in memory-drawing and five 
weights ; has unusual trouble with missing features and divided card ; his 
drawing of a diamond just passes). Reasoning, 10-8. Other Tests, 11-0. 

Educational Tests. Reading, 10-5. Spelling, 10-7. Arithmetic : Mental, 
10-8 ; Mechanical, 10-2. Problems, 10-8. Fundamental Rules, 10-0. Com- 
position, 11-0, Writing, 8-5. Drawing, 7-5. Handwork, 7-0. 

Psychological Tests. Motor control and co-ordination, exceedingly poor. 
Visual memory, poor. Delayed mechanical memory, rather poor. Other 
forms of memory, good. Temperament, somewhat unstable : emotional and 
impulsive. 

Diagnosis. The child's backwardness is largely due to early ill-health 
(rheumatism). It will be noted that, unlike the typical backward child, he 
is better in subjects demanding reasoning than in the more mechanical sub- 
jects. His chief deficiency, however, is for manual work. This is partly 
due to weakness of muscles and of muscular control ; but is doubtless further 
aggravated by an inability to visualise the concrete things he is copying or 
constructing. No definite outbreak of chorea could be traced ; but he 
presents many resemblances to the sub-choreic type. 

( J ) I am especially indebted to Miss V. G. Pelling for advice and assistance in attempting these sewing- 
tests. The teacher who wishes to attempt such scales for herself will find a suggestive experiment recorded 
by Miss Katherine Murdoch in The Measurement of Certain Elements of Handsewing (Columbia University : 
Teachers' College Contributions to Education). The scale there given is illustrated by photographed samples ; 
but the samples are not selected upon an age basis ; and the scale itself has still to be standardised. 



330 

Treatment. Largely physical, to improve general health, muscular 
strength, and co-ordination. Special coaching in formal subjects. To use 
intelligence and reasoning rather than blind trial and error in dealing with 
concrete problems. As an experiment, practice in tests of visualisation. 

Progress. In reading and arithmetic he has made nearly two years' 
progress in the course of a year ; in spelling, somewhat less. Handwriting 
has somewhat improved with improvement of health (level roughly 10-0) ; 
but still shows signs of fluctuation with health and weather. In drawing 
and handwork he has barely made half a year's progress. No clear improve- 
ment in visualisation as such. 

(vii) COMPOSITION. 

[Test 20.] 

That which of all school tests is at once the most fertile and the most 
fascinating still remains for notice. English composition, like handwork or 
handwriting, may be marked both for speed and for quality. But with this 
subject the same exercise may serve for the measurement of both features. 

In the present enquiry the topic chosen for the children's essays was 
" School." This title was selected, out of many others, because it announces 
a subject interesting and well known to all school children ; and, moreover, 
affords something familiar and concrete to the young and to the dull, and, at 
the same time, offers itself to a broader treatment and more abstract dis- 
cussion in the hands of the oldest and ablest. 1 Exactly half an hour was 
allowed for the task. The children were informed of the time-limit at the 
outset. After twenty-five minutes had elapsed a warning was given that the 
papers would be collected in five minutes. 2 No emphasis, however, was laid 
upon the necessity for speed or for amount. 

Strange as it may at first sight appear, the mere amount written is 
instructive. Indeed, among young or backward children, speed of com- 
position forms, as a rough measure of performance, no bad index of ability 
(Table LX). In speed, too, there is between the two sexes a remarkable 
divergence. Even upon paper, girls are more voluble than boys. 

Quality of composition, however, is far more significant than quantity ; 
and provides not only for linguistic ability, but also for educational capacity, 
and indeed for intelligence generally, a test infinitely superior. With 
composition, as with handwriting and drawing, qualitative excellence can 
best be measured by the method of samples. Here, as for the other subjects, I 
have constructed "probable error " scales for each age. Of the various speci- 
mens, however, which constitute the scale, my limits again permit me only 
to reproduce the most essential. The medians alone, therefore, will be quoted. 
These are printed without change of spelling or punctuation, on pages 395 
to 398. Norms for quality, in terms of mental age, are shown in Table LXI. 

The common method of marking compositions — to ignore positive excel- 
lences, to note only definite faults, to count the number of such faults, and 
to subtract that number from an arbitrary maximum — is from a scientific 
standpoint almost worthless. On the other hand, the pupils will gain 

(') The word " School " should be written on the blackboard. Both children and teachers have a curious 
tendency to alter this title : it constantly becomes " Our School," " My School," " The School," " School 
Life," and so forth — modifications which, of necessity, vitiate many of the comparisons subsequently to be 
made. It is hardly necessary to add that no preparation is permitted. The subject should not be stated 
until the last moment, when, all general instructions having been given, and the papers having been duly 
headed, the test-period is about to commence. 

( 2 ) The omission of this warning, especially in the absence of a visible clock, obliterates most of the 
formal perorations. The children simply break off when the expiration of the half-hour is announced. 



331 

considerably if symbols be affixed in the margin drawing attention to the 
type of fault, and if from time to time they be allowed to relieve the 
teacher's labour by marking each other's exercises. 

A schedule of items to be noted and faults to be overcome will be found 
of great service both in assessing literary merit and in teaching literary 
technique. Such a schedule should include not only (1) the more mechani- 
cal aspects of composition — as writing, spelling, punctuation, grammar, 
syntax ; but also (2) the more strictly literary aspects of composition — as 
range, correctness, and appropriateness of information, of vocabulary, and 
of rhetorical devices ; and, above all, (3) the logical aspects of composition 
— that is, the general organisation of ideas, as revealed by the unity, the 
complexity, the relevance, and the sequence of sentences and of paragraphs, 
and, indeed, by the intellectual structure of the essay as a whole. To print a 
detailed schedule for English composition, analogous to that given above 
for handwriting, would require a disproportionate allowance of space. From 
the headings here briefly enumerated the experienced teacher can readily 
elaborate his own. 

A rapid reference to the samples reproduced will discover a progress, 
fairly definite and tolerably well sustained, in most of these special char- 
acteristics. 1 None perhaps is more suggestive than the use of connectives and 
conjunctions. Thought is synthetic ; and the growing richness of mentality 
unveils itself in the growing fullness and complexity of its expression in 
words. Sentences to begin with are simple and asyndeton. But co-ordinating 
conjunctions, particularly " and," are inserted at an early stage. Temporal 
conjunctions ("when," "as," "while") appear later; and, later still, 
conjunctions of cause ("because" and "since") and contingency ("if" 
and "unless "). At first, each sentence starts a fresh subject. At the age 
of seven there are as many topics as there are clauses. The whole essay is 
a bald list of unassorted remarks, as incoherent and disjointed as a leaf from 
a grocer's catalogue. A year or so later, two or three consecutive sentences 
may sustain the same proposition ; but there is still a persistent tendency to 
revert, illogically and irrelevantly, to a point already done with. At the age 
of eleven or twelve, the essay is subdivided into sections ; and separate 
themes have separate paragraphs. Even with children comparatively young, 
however, the compositions may open with a brief preamble — usually a 
definition of school or an announcement of its purpose. But they do not 
so much formally conclude as suddenly leave off. Only the oldest indulge 
in a definite close — an inference drawn or a moral appended. To introduce, 
it would seem, is easier than to perorate ; the overture more natural than 
the finale. 

The changes in the child's intellectual outlook are clearly mirrored in 
his compositions. Throughout school life, it is evident, his comprehension 
of space relations is gradually widening. His horizon becomes enlarged ; 
his world more systematically arranged. And, by somewhat later stages, 
it would appear, his notion of time pursues a parallel development. There 
is, too, a constant progress in the degree of generality or abstraction which 
his mind can envisage : the concrete conception of school as one particular 
building, his own school, yields to a more general conception of school as a 
class or type of building ; and this in turn gives way ultimately to an 
abstract conception of school as a social institution. 

One cardinal symptom is the length of the sentences. Owing largely 
to the multiplication of conjunctions, the sentence tends to expand with an 

(*) A brief but most suggestive study of children's compositions will be found in apaper by C. W. Kimmins, 
Journ. Exp, Ped., 1916. Vol. III., No. 5, pp. 289-295, " Methods of Expression used by London School 
Children." 



332 

increase of ability or with an advance in age. From seven to fourteen, the 
average number of words in the sentence grows steadily from about six or 
seven to about sixteen or seventeen (Table LXII). Compared, however, with 
averages to be found among recognised authors, even the highest of these figures 
is low. For most modern writers the averages lie between twenty and forty. 
An average below the former impresses the reader as jerky and snappy ; 
an average above the latter as cumbrous and diffuse. With children, indeed, 
length of sentence forms a good index of the span of verbal synthesis — that 
is, of power to organise thought in units of high complexity, and to formu- 
late those units in words. It is, in consequence, a rough measure of literary 
ability ; the longer the sentence, the abler the writer. But with adults, 
perhaps, this generalisation should be reversed or, at any rate, qualified. 
Among University students, for example, the habitual propensity of the 
jejune essayist is to ramble and sprawl. Only the practised pen forms 
sentences short and crisp, like the utterances, let us say, of Mr. Masefield. 
Macaulay's sentences are notoriously curt. Their average, indeed, outruns 
the average even of our oldest children, amounting to approximately twenty- 
three words. Nevertheless, few authors are more abrupt. Macaulay's editor, 
Jeffrey, would not infrequently import upwards of three hundred words into a 
single period. 1 Ruskin is often as voluminous. Yet all are classics. Hence, to 
the literary apprentice, as every manual of rhetoric would insist, no standard 
measure for the perfect English sentence can be offered or prescribed. With 
a like restriction, the averages given in our tables are to be looked upon as facts 
observed, not canons to be obeyed. There is no virtue in uniform brevity ; 
no skill in unrelieved length. The one rule is to be " infinitely various " ; 
to condense, to expand ; to blurt, and then to amplify ; to balance lengthy 
statements with a series of brief ; and to set off the staccato emphasis of 
the short, sharp phrase against the complicated harmony, long-drawn and 
subtly suspended, of the periodic paragraph ; to be ever altering, as it were, 
the dimensions of the block, yet still to preserve the effect of a neat and 
solid structure. Even during school age this delicate interchange may be 
traced among the more felicitous writers. Note, for a case in point, the 
dexterous management of sentence-length in the essay quoted on the opposite 
page. It will be found, in fact, both in English lessons and in English 
literature, that, as regards the length of sentences, it is a high mean varia- 
tion, far more than any particular average, that stamps the pleasing stylist. 2 

4. EXTREME RANGE OF INDIVIDUAL VARIATION. 

Of all school subjects, English composition is the one in which individual 
variation is widest. Neither reading nor writing, nor spelling nor dictation, 
nor mechanical arithmetic nor problem arithmetic, nor manual subjects 
nor informational subjects, can show, as against the annual progress from 
one year to another, so large a standard deviation for the same year. It is 
evident in every table for this subject (Tables LX. to LXII.). Composition, 
therefore, lends itself admirably to demonstrating, in concrete and impressive 
form, a fact which I have so often emphasised, but which, through lack of 
space, I am unable to illustrate for every test and for every age — namely, 
the incredible range of ability over which individual children in the same 
age-group are scattered and dispersed. 

As a representative age I may perhaps select age 10 — , a year which 

t 1 ) For example, in the well-known passage on the genius of Shakespeare — a curious contrast to Mr. 
Masefield's remarks upon the same subject. 

( 2 ) Fifteen to fifty words are the extremes generally quoted as serviceable limits ( e.g.. by Brewster. 
The Writing of English, p. 167). Macaulay's Essay on Milton, however, contains several sentences of only 
five words, and two or three of nearly one hundred. 



333 

marks the middle of the senior school career, and forms for the brightest 
pupils the -final phase before the elementary school is exchanged for the 
secondary or the central. For this age I shall take, from among all the 
elementary school children of a single borough, two specimens of composition 
from the two extremes of ability, one from the keenest and one from the 
meanest, the best essay and the worst essay that I have as yet encountered. 
I shall quote first the composition of a girl aged 10 T 8 7r. Judged by my 
tests she is, out of a school population averaging in this borough about three 
thousand for each age-group, the cleverest child in her year. A girl of high 
mental powers and of still higher mental promise, in tests of intelligence 
thoughtful and observant, clear in describing what she observes, and cogent in 
arguing what she has thought out, in tests of attainment quick and accurate, 
a good linguist, a good mathematician, deft with the needle, neat with the 
pencil, and, above all, a constant and omnivorous reader, she appears, alike 
in general ability and in the special subjects of the school, foremost among 
these thousands. 1 Her essay was prompted by G. F. Watts' well-known 
picture, Hope. In eliciting her rare and special merits none among several 
other subjects that were proposed proved quite so effective. Her exercise on 
School, though excellent, was not unique. 

HOPE. 

Sublimely, majestically sorrowful she seems. Yet her 
name is Hope. Cowering low, not in submission to Fate, 
but longing for happiness, she sits, blindfolded ; and 
fingers, lovingly and musingly, the one vibrating string of 
her lyre, striving to create sweet melody. The first beam 
of sunshine is kissing her feet ; and in her inmost soul she 
wonders whether the time will come when it will kiss her 
drooping head. 

She is the good spirit of the world, and the ruler of 
the minds of those who dwell in it. In the darkest hour of 
night she visits us, and helps us to wait patiently for dawn 
and the light. 

Hope cannot read the future. But the morning star, 
the eye of Heaven, is a prophet ; and though Hope cannot 
see it, she feels its light shining in her heart. It puts into 
her soul dreams of happiness, thoughts of the realisation 
of her ideals, and the winning of eternal bliss. 

In the most unhappy moments of the life of man, she 
comes to him, drives away despair, and teaches him 
patience. She is like a sparkling and refreshing fountain 
to a thirsty flower, or a light seen in the darkness by some 
weary footsore traveller. 

The style of this essay in a girl of this age is perhaps not of a kind to 
be too zealously encouraged. In its language, in its sentiments, in its literary 
flowers and figures, it is all too plainly touched by the influence of the child's 
favourite writer at the moment — a well-known authoress of mystic novels. 
Nevertheless, the piece bears many marks, both obvious and recondite, of 

(') With the supplementary intelligence tests, with my reasoning tests, and with tests of special scholastic 
attainments, her mental Quotient was, in the main, curiously uniform, namely, about 155 per cent. With the 
Binet-Simon scale it was somewhat lower. But at this plane such a figure has no precise significance. 



334 

a mind peculiarly original, a skill in the use of words that is all her own. I 
may perhaps pause for a moment over one only of the more elusive. Those 
familiar with Prof. Saintsbury's History of Prose Rhythm will recognise in the 
child's diction many of the rhythmic types which he notes as recurrent in 
classical prose of the highest and most aspiring order. Take, for a revealing 
instance, her second paragraph. It consists of two sentences balanced one 
against the other. Each of these sentences in turn contains two co-ordinate 
clauses, similarly balanced in a fashion almost biblical, and ending respectively 
in an anapsest ("of the world") and a dactyl ("dwell in it"), and then in a 
dactyl ("visits us") and an anapsest ("and the light"). This intricate 
polyphony is succeeded by a curt contrasting statement of five words only, 
which ushers in a paragraph of four sentences, each progressively lengthened 
through seven, thirteen, sixteen, and thirty-one syllables, the whole closing 
in a triple parallelism. The ionic a minore undertone, so constant an accom- 
paniment of romantic prose, is throughout curiously insistent, like a 
contrapuntal melody in a fugue. It sustains the four clauses of the second 
paragraph (" and the ruler /of the minds of /those who dwell in . . ." etc.) ; 
while in the final paragraph the rocking of the cradle heard above the lullaby 
becomes almost too obtrusive. From start to finish, and above all in these 
two paragraphs, a pleasing prevalence of liquid consonants, and a skilful 
variation of broad vowels, still further heightens an effect, not wholly in- 
appropriate, of a consolatory music. 

To trace in a child's exercise subtleties such as these must strike many 
as far-fetched and fanciful. Let the reader, however, search, even in the 
best of our average selections below, for definite rhythm or vowel-melody, 
Their absence will be manifest to the most sceptical ear. At the same time, 
if the present piece be read in direct succession to a fragment penned on a 
similar theme by an adult professional hand — Chesterton's analysis of the 
same picture in his book on Watts, 1 or (si parva licet componere magnis) 
Pater's consummate rhapsody cast in the same pseonic metre on the 
mystical masterpiece of Lionardo 2 — then the shortcomings, the imma- 
turities, the blemishes even, of the child's prose impress themselves imme- 
diately. There is none of the ingenuity of Chesterton in the thought ; none 
of the hard and brilliant enamel of Pater in the style : merely the simple re- 
flections of a clever girl expressed in somewhat sentimental language — reflec- 
tions a little beyond the writer's real experiences, language a little too lofty 
for the thought that it clothes. Yet, despite all the limitations of her ideas, 
despite all the labouring of her style, how many children, aged barely eleven, 
educated only in a Council school, could produce so exquisite a trifle ? 

Not many yards from the school attended by this young genius lives a 
boy who, among all the "normal " 3 children of the same age, resident in 

l 1 ) PP. 97 et seq. 

( 2 ) The Renaissance, 1912 edition, p. 130. Note the curious similarity in rhythm. " She is 61d6r / than 
the rocks / among which she / sits ; like the vampire /, she has been dead / many times, and / learned th§ 
secrets / of the grave ; and / has been a diver / in deep seas, and / keeps their fallen / day about her /." 

( 3 ) He is not the poorest of all those attending ordinary elementary schools. In his own school, and 
in his own age-group, there is a typical Mongolian defective, entirely unable to write, who, confronted with 
the same picture at the age of 12&, simply " enumerates " : " There's a lady. There's a chair " (the lyre, 
which many children take to be the back of a chair, gripped in agony by a woman with a wounded head). 
" There's her feet. There's her hair. There's her nose." 

This boy, of course, could not, even in the most lax use of the word, be deemed " normal " ; and his 
performances have been excluded in my calculations for children of ordinary elementary schools. The boy 
quoted in the text is extremely backward in arithmetic, though not so defective here as in linguistic subjects. 
In the Binet tests he is backward by only one year, the retardation being due chiefly to his inability to read 
certain tests. 

For such cases as these the picture Hove is, of course, ill-suited, except to point the antithesis drawn 
above. Those who wish to compare results from their own pupils in class may conveniently use the coloured 
picture-postcards published by Messrs. Eyre and Spottiswoode. They should see, however, that the star 
and the single string are both distinct ; and that the title " Hope " is printed (or written in) below the 
reproduction. 



335 

the same borough, is poorest for composition. His essay, composed under 
precisely similar conditions, with the same picture in front of him and with 
the same allowance of time, reads, or rather runs, as follows : — 

Wos a pon a tim a putr of a lrg sitndan was out a bot 
ro stne no. (" Once upon a time a picture of a girl sitting 
down without any boots or stockings on.") 

This boy has made during the last three years but little advance. The 
following essay on " School," written by him at the age of 12^#, as part of 
my general survey, excels the preceding in one clear point : it at least con- 
tains a verb and forms a sentence : — ■ 

SCHOL. 

I lick Schol very mock dno and Scpl in a myines wen 
we have Scpch. ("I like school very much and and 
specially in the morning when we have scripture.") 

A comparison with the average samples on page 315 will show that this 
effort falls well beneath the productions even of a mediocre child of seven. 

The pair of essays on Hope supply a vivid illustration of the vast range 
of individual differences to be discovered within the limits of a single year. 
Those who are intimate with none but good schools will accept the first essay 
without demur ; they will find the second incredible in a normal child of 
ten. Those who are conversant only with poor schools will readily admit 
that they have seen performances almost, though perhaps not quite, as 
illiterate as the second ; but will insist that the first has been inspired, or 
at least edited, by an older hand. Few, I suspect, are acquainted with both 
extremities of the scale. The two samples are, of course, exceptions. Yet 
they are not outstanding exceptions. In a large and truly representative 
collection of the writings of children of ten, a few will be found nearly as 
admirable as the first, a few almosb as mean and pitiful as the second ; and 
between these two extremes the rest of the series might be marshalled in an 
order of diminishing merit, passing from one end of the scale to the other 
through barely perceptible gradations. So wide, so varied are the abilities 
of individual children at the same chronological age. 

5. RELATIVE BACKWARDNESS OF DEFECTIVES IN 
THE VARIOUS SUBJECTS. 

As the last problem in this long review, it may be of interest to glance 
back through the catalogue of tests, and to enquire in what particular subjects 
of the ordinary school curriculum mentally defective children appear most 
backward and in what subjects their backwardness seems least pronounced. 
For a reply, the reader may first compare the set of tables brought together in 
the third appendix (pp. 399-410). These tables, as they stand, suggest that, 
apart from a few notable exceptions, the differences in backwardness, revealed 
by the different tests, are by no means large. For an exact comparison, there- 
fore, it becomes essential that the results should be drawn from the same group 
of children throughout. For this purpose, I have, accordingly, selected data 
from those children only who were examined each in everyone of the foregoing 
tests. The average of their marks I have converted, at each chronological 
year, into a mental or " educational " age ; and from this again I have 
computed an " educational ratio," which will express the educational age 
as a percentage of the chronological. 



336 

With the low averages obtained from the youngest children such com- 
putations and conversions would be highly untrustworthy. I have, accord- 
ingly, retained none but children aged 10-0 and upwards ; and have also 
rejected children but recently transferred to a special school. The total 
number thus remaining is slender. It comprises 143 children. With a 
sample so small any distinctions by age or sex would be invalidated by a 
huge margin of error. Hence, in Table XXXVIII. the figures are shown for 
the entire group in the form of a single average educational ratio for each 
test. For many readers an " educational ratio " is an abstract and unusual 
concept. To lend it a significance more practical and more concrete, I have 
reconverted the ratios into the presumable mental ages to be attained at 
the age of 14-0, the year of leaving the ordinary elementary school. 1 

A comparison of the figures suggests the following conclusions. Children 
of London special schools are most backward in linguistic subjects 2 — in 
spelling, in intelligent reading, and in composition (the last a subject barely 
coming within the limits of their range). They are least backward in manual 
subjects — in handwork, in drawing, and in writing. In arithmetic their 
abilities vary with the type of sum. In the mechanical use of memorised 
tables — in addition and multiplication — they are, indeed, moderately 
accurate, though insufferably slow ; in subtraction and short division (the 
latter, again, hardly entering within the compass of their curriculum) they 
are lame and lamentably weak. Easy oral problems, dealing with simple 
money sums, they can solve with a measure of success ; such work is alike 
mechanical and concrete. Written exercises in the four rules, whether simple 
or monetary, the older defectives can also attack, though with an ample 
proportion of inaccuracy. But where the problem has to be read, where the 
scheme and type of working has to be discovered, where genuine reasoning, 
novel applications, and abstract processes of two or more steps are involved, 
there they fail utterly. And, no matter what the subject be, when speed is 
demanded, their incapacity becomes as sadly apparent as that of a wooden- 
legged cripple when his companions break into a run. 

The above comparisons apply to the majority of children in special 
schools ; they do not apply to all. Among the brighter defectives, reading, 
so far from being the task in which they are most backward, is not infre- 
quently the subject in which they acquit themselves best of any. Yet even 
here it is in mere mechanical accuracy and in mere mechanical speed that 
they excel, much more than in genuine comprehension. A few, contrary 
to the general trend, reach a high speed in simple addition — a feat, however, 
no less mechanical. On referring to the detailed tables for these two subjects., 
the reader will observe that, whereas in most subjects the borderline for 
ages twelve to fourteen rarely rises much above a mental age of nine years, 
in reading it is fixed at about ten years, and in simple addition at eleven. 
On the other hand, for composition, for written arithmetic (particularly 
problems), and for simple division, the borderline tends to be low. Here, 
between normals and defectives, the amount of overlapping is scanty — much 

(*) The special school teacher who attempts to check these figures by his experience will probably find 
them either too high or too low, according to the type of school with which he is most familiar. If he com- 
pares them with a typical group aged fourteen in a school for elder boys, he will consider my figures too 
low. If he compares them with the older children left behind in the junior school, he will consider them too 
high. He must remember that the figures are deduced by calculations from an eclectic sample of younger 
children. 

( 2 ) On the other hand, Binet has stated that "sub-normal children, whom we have brought together 
in the special classes, are all weak in number work, much weaker than in spelling or reading " (.Intelligence 
of the Feebleminded, p. 95). Such a broad generalisation, however, must not be pressed too closely. As we 
have noted at various points, much depends upon (1) the grade of defective accepted ; (2) the age at which 
the diagnosis is made ; (3) the particular school subjects upon which the diagnosis chiefly turns ; (4) the 
kind of number work to which such a statement refers. 



337 

less, indeed, than a comparison of the respective averages would imply. 
Probably the mental age assigned for these subjects to the average defective, 
somewhat magnifies, by its nature and size, his apparent attainments. At 
the corresponding mental level the young normal child is just learning the 
rudiments of these subjects ; but he is learning them with great rapidity. 
The defective, on the contrary, learns them with laborious slowness — in truth, 
by comparison, with a diminishing speed. In these subjects, if we are to 
contrast the backwardness of the average defective with the attainments of 
the average normal of his own chronological year, we ought rather to measure 
it in terms of the standard deviation for the normal age-group. This pro- 
cedure, though cumbersome, would be more equitable and fair ; it is, 
however, too elaborate for my present data, and too technical for my present 
exposition. 



TABLE XXXVIH. 

Relative Attainments of Children of Special M.D. Schools in Tests of 
the Chief Subjects of the School Curriculum. 



Subject. 


Educational Age 


Educational 


at Fourteen. 


Ratio. 


Dictation 


6-3 


45-3 






6 


5 


46 


7 


Reading (Comprehension) 




6 


8 


48 


9 


Composition (Quality) 




7 





50 


3 


Reading (Speed, Discontinuous) 




7 


1 


50 


8 


Simple Subtraction (Speed) 




7 


o 


51 


4 


Arithmetic (Problems, Written) 




7 


2 


51 


7 


Composition (Speed) 




7 


4 


52 


6 


Reading (Accuracy) 




7 


5 


53 


3 


Simple Division (Speed) 




7 


6 


54 


1 


Simple Subtraction (Accuracy) 




7 


7 


54 


7 


Simple Addition (Speed) 




7 


7 


55 


1 


Arithmetic (Written, Mechanical) 




7 


8 


55 


6 


Reading (Speed, Continuous) 




7 


8 


55 


9 






7 


9 


56 


5 






8 





56 


8 


Simple Multiplication (Speed) 




8 





57 


4 


Simple Addition (Accuracy) 




8 


1 


57 


9 


Writing (Speed) 




8 


4 


59 


7 


Simple Multiplication (Accuracy) 




8 


5 


60 


5 


Writing (Quality) 




8 


7 


62 


1 


Drawing 




9 


1 


64 


9 


Handwork 




9-8 


69-7 


Average Educational Age and Ratio 


7-7 


54-6 


Average Mental Age and Ratio (Binet- 










8 


1 


57- 


6 



The foregoing comparison is not altogether barren of practical corollaries. 
In the school curriculum the main obstacles for the defective arise from the 
fundamental aspects of the linguistic subjects, most of all, perhaps, from 
spelling. Might it not, therefore, be judicious, with all save those who 
possess special linguistic abilities, to aim in these particular subjects (as I 
have already urged in detail above) only at the barest essentials ? We must 
z 



338 

not be too easily seduced by the gloss of surface achievements, by a semblance 
of progress in the pages of a copybook, or the glib recitation of a lesson of 
the classroom. We must remember there will be an echo of education in 
the fine phrases of a parrot, if only its cage has been fortunately placed. 

In handwork, in oral problems, and in rote arithmetic, on the other 
hand, the relative excellence of the defective is more genuine ; and springs 
more immediately from the relative powers of the pupil. But here also 
they are enhanced by the educational methods of the teacher, which 
rightly accentuate and exploit these powers. At the same time, since 
mental speed is largely, even among low-grade intelligences, a matter 
of training and drill, the slow performance of defectives throughout 
the curriculum suggests that systematic practice, systematically renewed, 
might yield a sudden and sustained acceleration, and so reduce, if it did not 
remove, this disproportionate lethargy. But again the data are too meagre 
to bear the weight of such conclusions. Nor was it here my purpose to 
develop them at length ; but only to illustrate by what means and with 
what prospects they may be deduced from such enquiries. 

6. CONCLUSION. 

And thus I am led to reiterate at the close what I have emphasised 
from the beginning, that the scales are only tentative. Each test, in its 
present condition, is to be regarded as a venture rather than as an achieve- 
ment, as a provisional and imperfect illustration rather than as a finished 
and final product. It is put forward as a stimulus to the enquiring teacher, 
as a starting-point for further research, not as a ready-made instrument, 
calibrated, patented, warranted exact. If the tests are now somewhat 
prematurely published, it is in the hope that they may improve and profit 
by criticism, not that they may be used as touchstones for the criticism of 
the work of others. 

From the need for a preliminary sketch or preparatory design, the 
scientist is no more exempt than the artist. The sculptor, before he and his 
fellow- workmen set the plaster for the full-sized metal cast, kneads a minia- 
ture statuette in cheap and plastic clay. Such a studio model is all I have 
roughed out. There is plenty to retouch, to refashion, to remould. No one 
can mistake a raw and clumsy figurine for a polished effigy in bronze. 

To attempt a complete collection of standardised scholastic tests will 
be assuredly to undertake a colossus. To perfect such a series will be a 
task beyond the power of any solitary investigator, experimenting only in 
a few selected schools. It must be the self-appointed duty of a large band 
of co-operating enquirers — expert teachers, examining each his own pupils 
according to some prearranged scheme, pooling the results from a wide 
variety and a large number of departments, constantly criticising one 
another's test- questions, constantly checking their own age-norms, reviewing 
and revising the whole in the light both of general teaching experience and 
of special knowledge of special subjects. The sooner such research proves 
these scales to be worthless, the sooner will their aim have been achieved. 

Cyril Burt. 

9th June, 1920. 



339 



APPENDIX I. 



MATERIALS FOR READING, SPELLING AND ARITHMETIC TESTS. 



Test 1. 

READING (ACCURACY). 
Graded Vocabulary Test. 



For test material, see over-leaf. 
For Instructions, see pp. 271-2. For Norms, see Table XXXIX., p. 399. 



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342 



Test 2. 



READING (LETTERS AND FIGURES). 

For Instructions, see pp. 272-3. 






S 


A 


X 


T 


E 


M 


B 


K 


I 


c 


R 


L 


P 


D 


G 


N 


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w 


F 


U 


Z 


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Q 




s 


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t 


X 


f 


c 


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J 


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d 


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w 


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1325487906 

12 18 14 11 13 19 15 17 16 20 

26 39 50 74 100 132 576 1,000 1,498 1,927 
10,000 500,000 1,000,000 72,967 8,104,035 
hi I M 2| O'l 2-5 10-001 0-17 6-3 



343 



Test 3. 
READING (SPEED ; AND, WITH DEFECTIVES, ACCURACY). 
Discontinuous Ungraded 1 Test. Two- and Three-Letter Monosyllables. 

For test material, see over-leaf. 

For Instructions, see pp. 273-4. For Norms, see Tables XL. and 
XLL, pp. 399 and 400. 



( ') The words are graded for defectives ; but for normal children are practically uniform in difficulty 
throughout. 



go 


is 


at 


SO 


cat 


Number 
of words 

5 


to 


on 


the 


we 


it 


10 


he 


• 
in 


of 


my 


an 


15 


up 


by 


be 


and 


me 


20 


do 


if 


too 


dog 


as 


25 


us 


you 


for 


see 


am 


30 


no 


or 


man 


Tom 


but 


35 


ran 


ox 


not 


can 


she 


40 


mat 


sun 


has 


boy 


pen 


45 


box 


bat 


bad 


his 


did 


50 


hat 


pig 


say- 


had 


wet 


55 


sat 


day- 


ten 


rat 


bee 


60 


run 


fox 


jam 


was 


get 


65 


sit 


hot 


big 


hen 


her 


70 


out 


all 


men 


top 


red 


75 


two 


pot 


bed 


let 


pat 


80 


Sam 


fed 


fat 


leg 


got 


85 


Ned 


pin 


are 


net 


one 


90 


cup 


pet 


pan 


fun 


may 


95 


old 


now 


who 


bit 


six 


100 



sum 


saw 


pit 


cap 


hop 


Number 
of words 

105 


dad 


hit 


lot 


lad 


wee 


110 


ink 


sad 


set 


Bob 


off 


115 


met 


egg 


nor 


fan 


cow 


120 


lip 


tea 


ill 


yet 


fit 


125 


pay 


beg 


pop 


sea 


led 


130 


end 


bag 


lay 


how 


put 


135 


joy 


ham 


dot 


buy 


lit 


140 


far 


log 


new 


fix 


way 


145 


eat 


fly 


ram 


mix 
map 


win 
arm 


150 


yes 


toy 


tin 


155 


bar 


our 


Jim 


hip 


hay 


160 


nut 


rag 


sin 


sow 


tub 


165 


ice 


why 


ask 


car 


cry 


170 


gun 


bid 


sky 


fin 


rap 


175 


rum 


bun 


jug 


fry 


sip 


180 


jar 


van 


toe 


cot 


dim 


185 


jet 


tip 


wit 


rot 


mob 


190 


mew 


lap 


lie 


dig 


tap 


195 


oak . 


fog 


air 


vex 


ark 


200 



346 

Test 4. 
READING (COMPREHENSION). 

Graded Directions Test. 

For Instructions, see pp. 275-6. For Norms, see Table XLIL, p. 400. 

Age 5- 

Get me a pen. 

Age 6.- 

Put a pin in the box. 

Give the box to me and sit down. 

Put two more pins into the box, 
and one near it on the table. 

Lift your hands above your head, 
and look at me while I count 5. 

Pick up the box again ; shake out 
the pins ; then give seven pins to 
me, holding them in your left hand. 



Age 7- 

I have something in my pocket which I 
use to tell the time. Do not say what it is 
called ; but tell how many hands you think 
it has. 

Open my book at page 8. Put the pencil 
between the leaves of the book. Shut the 
book. And then say to me : " I have done 
what you asked." 

Take this card with you and do all that 
it tells you. First, go outside the room. 
While you are outside, change the card into 
your other hand, and then come back and 
put the card on the table. 

" So the shepherd brought his flock to the 
market ; and the animals were sold to make 
mutton, after their wool had been cut off to 
make cloth." 

What kind of animals were they ? 

Turn with your face toward the window 
before you read the rest of the card. When 
I tap, walk two steps away from me. 
When I tap again, raise your empty hand. 
When I tap the third time, do nothing. At 
the fourth tap, bring me the card. 



12 



13 



348 



Age 8- 1 



Here, she, believe, queen. 
Each of these words has the letter " e " in it. 
Tell me which contains it the largest number of 
times. 



Age 9.- 1 

" The greenest buds of May, 

The brightest flowers of June, 

To me are never so gay, 

As a brown October day, 
With its golden sheaves, 
And its crimson leaves, 

And Autumn tints of decay." 

Which month does the writer think the most 
beautiful— May, October, or June ? 



Age io.- 1 

Look at the figures below. Cross out every 3 
that comes after 4, except when the 4 follows an 0. 

12312435436704180439 
74312304343123456783 



(') These headings simply indicate that of the children tested approximately 50 per cent, at the ages 
specified were able to answer the questions indicated. There are, however, great variations from school to 
school in the relative difficulty of such questions ; and, of course, a single question is not sufficient to decide 
a mental age. The reaso.is for appropriating only one question to each of the h'gher ages are noted above, 
p. 276. 

For the last two questions paper ruled in J-in. or \-'m. squares is used. 



349 



Age 11.- 

" Yesterday," said Mrs. Jones, u our cook and 
the gardener had a race : and to my surprise the 
gardener won." 

"What surprised you ? " said Mr. Smith. "Surely 
you expected the man to beat the woman ?" 

"Yes," said Mrs. Jones, "but he didn't. You 
see our gardener is a land girl : and the cook is a 
Frenchman who used to work in a hotel kitchen." 

Mr. Smith laughed. " Of course," he said, " I 
naturally thought your cook was a ...» , and your 
gardener a . . . ." 

Read Mr. Smith's last remark aloud, putting in 
the missing words. 

Age 12 - l 

Take the squared paper and the pencil. Place a 
capital letter O on the fifth square in the top row. 
Now make a cross in the third square of the next 
row, unless there are more than six squares in this 
row, in which case you should write the first letter 
of your surname in the last square of the third row. 

- Age 13.~ 

Suppose that the blue lines on the paper are 
streets. With your pencil start from the black mark, 
and go straight on in the direction of the arrow, 
until you come to the fourth turning to the right. 
Go down this, take the third turning to your left 
and stop at the very next cross road. 



t 1 ) See footnote t 1 ) on preceding page. 



350 



Test 5. 

READING (COMPREHENSION ; ALSO SPEED, ACCURACY, AND 
EXPRESSION). 

Continuous Prose Test. 

For Instructions, see pp. 277-283. For Norms, see Tables XLIII. to 
XLV., pp. 401-2. 



On his way out of the town he had to pass the 
prison, and as he looked in at the windows, whom 
should he see but William himself peeping out of the 
bars, and looking very sad indeed. " Good morning, 
brother," said Tom, "have you any message for the 
King of the Golden River?" William ground his 
teeth with rage, and shook the bars with all his 
strength ; but Tom only laughed at him, and advising 
him to make himself comfortable till he came back 
again, shouldered his basket, shook the bottle of holy 
water in William's face till it frothed again, and 
marched off in the highest spirits in the world. 
It was, indeed, a morning that might have made 
anyone happy, even with no Golden River to seek 
for. Level lines of dewy mist lay stretched along 
the valley, out of which rose the massy mountains — 
their lower cliffs in pale grey shadow, hardly 
distinguishable from the floating vapour, but gradually 
ascending till they caught the sunlight, which ran 
in bright touches of ruddy colour along the sharp 
crags, and pierced, in long, level rays, through their 
fringes of spear-like pine. 



352 



Test 5 — continued. — READING (Comprehension.) 
Continuous Prose Test. 

INTERROGATORY. 

For Instructions, see p. 282. For Norms, see Table XLV., p. 402. 



Order of 


Order of 






Question. 


Difficulty. 


Question. 


Answer. 


1 


3 


The story is about two people. 








What were their names ? 


Tom. 


2 


6 


And the name of the other ? 


William. 

(If both names are given 
in answer to the first ques- 
tion, the reply counts 2 
marks. ) 


3 


8 


Were they related to one 
another, or were they only 








friends ? 


Brothers. 






(If " related " is not under- 








stood, repeat question, substi- 








tuting " Did they belong to 








the same family ? ") 




4 


1 


Where was William ? 


In prison. 

(For " at the window " 
allow only \ marks, unless 
the child can specify that it 
was a prison window.) 


5 


15 


What did Tom say to William 


Have you a message for 






when he first saw him ? 


the King ? 

(For " from the King " 
allow only | mark.) 


6 


9 


How did William reply ? 


He was very angry ; or he 
gnashed his teeth ; or 
shook the bars. 


7 


13 


Did Tom lose his temper, too ? 


No. He laughed ; or 






What did he do ? 


started taunting or teas- 






(If the child replies, " he 


ing him. 






shouldered his basket," or " he 


(For "no" alone, allow 






just went on his way," ask, 


only J mark.) 






" What did he do first ? ") 




8 


18 


What else did Tom say to 


Make yourself comfort- 






William ? 


able ; or Wait there till 
I come back. 


9 


4 


How was Tom feeling that day ? 


Happy. Pleased with 
himself. 


10 


12 


What time of day was it ? 


Morning. 



353 



READING (Comprehension) — continued. 



Order of 


Order of 






Question. 


Difficulty. 


Question. 


Answer. 


11 


2 


What kind of weather ? 


Bright ; or beautiful ; or 
misty ; or sunny. 


12 


19 


Where had Tom come from ? 


The town. 


13 


5 


What was he setting out to 


The Golden River. 






find? 


(If the child replies " the 
river" or "the King," 
without being able to 
specify further, allow only 
\ mark.) 


14 


7 


What was he carrying ? 


A bottle. 


15 


11 


What else ? 


A basket. 


16 


10 


What was in his bottle ? (What 


Holy water (often given in 






kind of water ?) 


reply to No. 14, in which 
case the answer scores 2 
marks. ) 


17 


17 


What did Tom do with the 


Showed him the water ; or 






bottle as he left William ? 


shook it in his face ; or 
shook it till it frothed. 

(No mark for " threw 
the water at William.") 


18 


14 


What sort of country was Tom 


Mountains ; a valley ; a 






walking towards ? What 


rocky country. 






could he see in the distance ? 




19 


16 


Could he see the whole of the 


No. Because of the mist 






mountains very clearly ? Why 


(or shadow). 






not ? 




20 


20 


What sort of trees were grow- 








ing on the edge of the rocks ? 


Pines. 



2 A 



354 



Test 6 —SPELLING. 
(Graded Vocabulary Test.) 

For Instructions, see pp. 287-8. For Norms, see Table XL VI., p. 402, 

Age. 
5 — a it cat to and 
the on up if box 

6— run bad but will pin 

cap men got to-day this 

7 — table even fill black only 

coming sorry done lesson smoke 

8— money sugar number bright ticket 

speak yellow doctor sometimes already 

9 — rough raise scrape manner publish 
touch feel answer several towel 

10— surface pleasant saucer whistle razor 

vegetable improvement succeed beginning accident 

1 1 — decide business carriage rogue receive 

usually pigeon practical quantity knuckle 

12— distinguish experience disease sympathy illegal 

responsible agriculture intelligent artificial peculiar 

1 3 — luxurious conceited leopard barbarian occasion 

disappoint necessary treacherous descendant precipice 

14— virtuous memoranda glazier circuit precision 

mosquito promiscuous assassinate embarrassing tyrannous 



355 



Test 7— DICTATION (Continuous Graded Test.) 



For Instructions, see pp. 288-290. For Norms, see Table XL VII., p. 403. 

No. of 

Letters. 

It is on a cat, but not a dog. (20) 

I saw her run by in the wet. (40) 

She came to seek or steal (60) 

a bird's nest in the grass — (80) 

the cruel little kitten ! (100) 

I have asked forty girls (120) 

this puzzle. None failed. (140) 

Imitate their industry. (160) 

Explain every sentence. (180) 

Employ beautiful style. (200) 

Should your solution be (220) 

satisfactory, I believe (240) 

thoroughly acceptable (260) 

prizes will be bestowed, (280) 

designed for either sex — (300) 

pianos, sewing machines, (320) 

ingenious model yachts, (340) 

forfeited photographs, (360) 

excellent bicycles for (380) 

picturesque adventure, — (400) 

an emphatic sign, 

genuine if miscellaneous in character, 

of our conscientious appreciation 

of your unique proficiency. (500) 



356 

ARITHMETIC. 
Graded Oral Test : Mental. 

[Test 8.] 
For Instructions, see pp. 296-8. For Norms, see Table XLVIII., p. 403. 

Below the Educational Age of 4-. 

For children at the lowest mental levels, e.g., defectives of a mental age 
of 3-, and young normals who have never been to school, exercises of the 
following types may be recommended to test their "sense of number " : 

1. Show the child 1, 2, 3 or more fingers : ask him to do the same. 

2. Show the child 3 or more beads, (a) arranged in some simple pattern 
like the pips upon a domino, (&) arranged in a single line (much harder) : 
ask him to pick out the same number. 

3. Show the child a given number of beads, and ask him to hold up the 
same number of fingers ; and vice versa. 

4. Try the same exercises through other sensory channels : e.g., make 
him reproduce a given number of taps on the table, of taps on his own hand, 
of rhythmic movements impressed upon his arm — the child's eyes being 
shut. 

5. Make him repeat after you the numbers in order — e.g., " 1, 2, 3" — 
progressively increasing the length of the series. 

6. Ask him to name without counting small numbers of fingers, beads, 
taps, etc. ; and to compare without counting the size of larger but unequal 
groups (" which is the bigger ? ") 

7. Make him count aloud, pointing with his finger, larger number of 
objects, arranged in rows. 

8. Make him arrange beads in a row in a definite and recurrent order 
according to colour : e.g., 1 red, 3 blue, (2 yellow), 1 red again, and so on. 

9. Make him build up 2 groups ("one for you and one for me ") con- 
taining a given number of beads in each. 

10. Make him divide a given heap of (say) 6 beads into 2 (or 3) equal 
groups. 

Age 4-. 1 

1. How many fingers do I hold up ? (Showing 2.) 

2. If I hold up one more, how many will there be ? 

3. Count how many fingers there are now. Count them with your 
finger. (Holding out four with each hand.) 

4. Let me hear how far you can count — one, two, three, (To 

pass, should recite the cardinal numbers to 10 at 4| years, to 19 at 5|, to 21 
or beyond at 6 J or above.) 2 

t 1 ) The ages by which the earliest and latest sets of questions are denominated are convenient and con- 
ventional rather than exact (see p. 298). Tests below the age of 4 — are not included in the totals given 
in the tables. 

( 2 ) The higher ages refer primarily to chronological ages of backward and defective children. 



357 

5. If you had 3 pennies in this hand, and then I gave you 1 more, how 
many would you have altogether ? (Hold out the child's hand that he may 
visualise the money.) 

6. Suppose you had 2 pennies, and lost 1 : how many would you have 
left ? 

7. How many are 7 and 1 more ? 

8. How many halfpennies would you want to buy a penny bun ? 

9. Two and two more ? 

10. If I gave you 3 sweets and you ate 2, how many would you have left ? 

Age 5-. 

1. If you had 5 nuts and gave 1 away, how many would be left for 
yourself ? 

2. If you had 3 beads in this hand and 2 beads in this one, how many 
would that be altogether ? 

3. Take 2 from 4. How many would be left ? 

4. How many halfpennies are there in a penny and a halfpenny ? 

5. What are twice 2 ? 

6. How many farthings would you want to buy a penny ball ? 

7. 5 and 2 more. How many is that ? 

8. Four boys have given me a halfpenny each. How many pennies is 
that worth ? 

9. I once had 4 pet mice in a cage. One died : one ran away : and one 
was eaten by the cat. How many were left ? 

10. A boy caught 4 fish on Friday and 3 on Saturday. How many fish 
did he catch altogether ? 

Age 6-. 

1. How many do 6 and 3 make ? 

2. What are 5 two's ? 

3. Take 5 pence from 7 pence. How much would be left ? 

4. How many ears are there on 3 donkeys ? 

5. How many farthings are there in 2d. ? 

6. Write down (in figures) 35. 

7. How much is one half of 4 ? 

8. I have 3 pockets and 3 apples in each. How many is that altogether ? 

9. I put 2d. in my money-box every morning before I go to school. 
How many pennies shall I have saved in 3 days ? 

10. I had 9 eggs in a basket, and smashed 3. How many were left ? 

Age 7-> 

1. My brother has picked 6 nuts, my sister has picked 10, and I have 
picked 18. How many have we got altogether ? 

2. 12 girls have a farthing each. How many pennies is that ? 

3. How many |d. stamps can I buy for 9d. ? 

4. I started with 14 marbles, and I have won 26. How many have I 
now ? 



358 

5. I have 2s. to divide among 4 children. How much should each have 
if all are to have the same amount ? 

6. How many days are there in 6 weeks ? 

7. My brother is 4 ft. high. How many inches is that ? 

8. On a tram there were 50 people who each paid Id. fare. How much 
(in shillings and pence) did the conductor take altogether ? 

9. If treacle were 8d. a pound, how much would f lb. cost ? 

10. Yesterday we went blackberrying. I picked 21 berries, and my 
brother ate 12 of them. How many were left ? 

Age 8- 

1. A boy had 20 marbles. Afterwards he won 3 and lost 5. How 
many had he then ? 

2. How many penny stamps can I buy for 7s. ? 

3. Mother gave me 2Jd. Father gave me twice as much. How much 
have I altogether ? 

4. I have 22 farthings in a bag. How many pennies is that worth ? 

5. In an infants' school there were 99 boys and 60 girls. How many 
more boys than girls were there ? 

6. Norton is 36 miles away. What would the fare be at Id. a mile ? 

7. Tommy collected 32 tram tickets. 18 are white, and the rest are 
pink. How many pink ones has he ? 

8. How many beans must be taken from 47 to leave only a dozen ? 

9. I have an empty album that will hold 100 picture post-cards. I have 
been to 6 different towns during my holiday, and at each I bought ten 
picture post-cards. How many more must I collect to fill the album ? 

10. Add together a farthing, a halfpenny, a sixpence, a shilling, and 
half-a-crown. 

Age 9-. 

1. Jack weighs exactly 100 lbs. His sister weighs 81 lbs. How much 
heavier is Jack ? 

2. I have been for a week's holiday. I spent 6d. a day while I was 
away. How much should I have left out of 4s. ? 

3. I bought 9 penny stamps and 7 halfpenny ones. How much change 
should I have from 2s. ? 

4. When oranges were 2 a penny, how many could I buy for half-a- 
crown ? 

5. Tom had 31 sweets. And 9 boys have each given him 7 more. How 
many has he altogether ? 

6. I had 12s. and I have spent 5s. lljcl. How much have I left ? 

7. How many ounces are there in If lbs. ? 

8. My bookshelf is 3| ft. long. How many books will it hold if each 
is 1 inch thick ? 

9. Share Is. 3d. equally among 10 boys. 

10. I have cut 1 ft. of tape into pieces 1J ins. long. How many pieces 
have I made ? 



359 

Age 10- 

1. I get 6d. an hour, and I work 8 hours a day. How much can I earn 
in 5 days ? 

2. If apples were 4 for 3d., how many could I buy for 3s. ? 

3. I must be at the station a quarter of an hour before my train starts. 
It starts at five-and-twenty to one. When should I be there ? 

4. My brother was born in 1899. How old will he be in 1930 ? 

5. Take lOOd. from £1. How much is left in shillings and pence ? 

6. I bought 10 pairs of boots at the rate of a guinea for a single boot. 
How many pounds did the 10 pairs cost ? 

7. What is the difference between one-half and one-quarter of 
£8 8s. 8d. ? 

8. I posted a penny post-card every day in January. How much did 
the postage amount to ? 

9. My brother is 21 years old. I was born when he was 10. Add both 
our ages together. 

10. What would be the total postage for 9 letters, 9 post-cards, and 9 
circulars at lfd., Id., and |d. respectively ? 

Age 11-. 

1. Write down 2-25 as a vulgar fraction in its lowest terms. 

2. A servant earned £26 a year wages. How much was that a week ? 

3. How much is seven-tenths of half-a-crown ? 

4. Divide 15s. 5|d. by 7. 

5. How many minutes from J past 6 to J to 8 ? 

6. A man walked 2 miles in 30 minutes. How many hours would 20 
miles take him ? 

7. How many months will there be between 1st January, 1920, and 
31st December, 1924 ? 

8. My neighbour drinks | pint of cider at dinner and J pint at supper. 
How long will a 7-gallon cask last him at that rate ? 

9. If 3 glasses cost 4Jd., how many can I get for 2s. ? 

10. How many words are there in a book of 100 pages, at 20 lines to a 
page and 10 words to a line ? 

Age 12- 

1. What fraction of £1 is a third of Is. ? 

2. A wall is 30 ft. long and 4 ft. high. How much would it cost to 
whitewash it at Jd. a square foot ? 

3. The church door is 50 ft. away, and I step 2J ft. In how many 
steps can I get to the church ? 

4. 129 rackets at 5/- each ? 

5. How many lbs. and ozs. in -75 of 2 lbs. ? 

6. A man bought 100 oranges for 5s. 16 were bad. He sold the rest 
at a shilling a dozen. How much profit did he make ? 



360 

7. I bought a football for 12/- and sold it for 15/-. What was my 
gain per cent. ? 

8. What is the shortest length of silk from which I can cut off either 
4 inches, 6 inches, or 8 inches an exact number of times ? 

9. Divide 3/- among 2 boys so that one has 8d. more than the other. 
10. How many pieces of a foot and a quarter can I cut from 5 yds. ? 

Age 13-. 

1. What is the average of 6 inches, 7 inches, 9 inches, and 1 ft. ? 

2. A motor goes 3 times as fast as a horse. The horse goes 36 miles 
in 6 hours. How long will it take the motor ? 

3. Simple interest on £300 for 3 years at 5 per cent. ? 

4. 4J ozs. at 2/8 per lb. ? 

5. 3 boys can eat a pudding in 10 minutes. How quickly can 12 boys 
eat it ? 

6. How many times is one-sixth contained in 13 J ? 

7. What is 2J per cent, on £4 ? 

8. My little garden is 7 yds. square ; my sister's is 5 yds. square. By 
how many square yds. is mine bigger than hers ? 

9. How many sq. yds. of paper will just cover a table 6 ft. long and 

3 ft. broad ? 

10. Multiply -5 by 2-4 and divide by 3. 

Age 14-. 

1. How many labels 2| in. by 2 in. are needed to cover a sheet 10 in. 
square ? 

2. If a train goes 30 miles in If hours, how far will it travel in 

4 J hours ? 

3. If 6 men do a piece of work in 15 days, how many men must I employ 
to get it done in 10 ? 

4. A blackboard is 3 ft. broad and 4 ft. long. How many inches of wire 
would just go round the edge ? 

5. One-third of my stick is in the water ; one-quarter is in the mud ; 
15 inches is above the water. How long is the stick ? 

6. Add the cube of 5 to the square root of 121. 

7. I want to cover these square boxes or cubes completely with gold 
paper. How many sq. yds. shall I need ? There are 3 boxes : and each 
edge measures 2 ft. 

8. In what proportion must rice at 7d. a lb. be mixed with rice at 4d. 
a lb. to make the mixture worth 5d. a lb. ? 

9. My father is 45 years of age, and I am 21. At what age was my 
father 3 times as old as I ? 

10. If 2 hens lay 2 eggs in 2 days, how many eggs will 6 hens lay in 
6 days ? 



361 

ARITHMETIC (Written Graded Test : Mechanical.) 

[Test 9.] 
For Instructions, see pp. 298-300. For Norms, see Table XLIX, p. 404. 

Age 7-. 

1. 2 1 

3 7 

1 8 

3 6 



2. 61 - 38. 

3. 953 x 4. 

4. 2s. Id. + Is. 3d. + lOd. 

5. Is. 5d. x 3. 

Age 8-. 

1. 9 6 8 7 

12 9 

8 3 4 

3 6 2 

2 17 5 









2. 


5)1085 


3. 


From 


£9 15s. 9£d. 




Take 


£3 17s. 6Jd. 


4. 


£ s. 


d. 




1 18 


H 




3 9 


H 




2 5 


7f 




3 


4 









5. £1 13s. 5d. x 3. 











Age 9- 


1. 


From 9,084| take 3,597^ 


2. 


£ 


s. 


d. 






42 


16 


n 






3 


19 


8* 






18 


7 


4! 






25 


10 


11 















362 

3. 98,467 -f- 84. 

4. Bill. 1J lbs. of Butter at 1/- per lb. 

Milk for one week at 2d. per day. 
2 doz. Eggs at ljd. each. 

5. How many farthings in £2 17s. 6Jd. ? 

Age 10-. 



1. 2233-6 -f 


8. 




2. £61 


13s. 


7|d. 


X 64, 


3. yds. 


ft. 


in. 




35 


2 


Hf 




8 


1 


9| 




12 





71 




73 


2 


f>l 













4. How many pounds in 1 ton 6 cwt. qr. st. 3 lbs. ? 
5 - to + i + 8-5 - 0-2. 

Age 11-. 

1. If 14 yds. of calico cost 5s. 3d., what is the cost of 35 yds. ? 

2. 5-281 x 0-047. 

Q OJ7 i_ I 2.0. I 16 _ 12 

6 ' Z T5 + X 21 + 35 10 5« 

4. Express f of 7s. 6d. as a fraction of £1. 

5. Find the value of 3 tons 10 cwt. 2 qrs. at £5 10s. Od. per ton. 

Age 12-. 

1. If it takes 16 men 28 days to do a piece of work, how long will it 
take 21 men to do it ? 

_ „. ... 4236-4 x -008 

2. Simplify 

* J 1-0591 

3. Find the L.C.M. of 48, 28, 50, 51. 

4. Find the simple interest on £560 for 22 years at 2| per cent. 

5. Find the sum of 1-7 of 5 lbs. + 3-75 of 1 lb. 4 ozs. 



1. Simplify 



Age 13-. 

4-14-1-4-4 

t 4 t -g- nr 6 

2f - 1^ 



2. Find the average of 2 tons 6 cwt. 3 qrs. 3 lbs., 3 tons 17 cwt. 2 qrs. 
7 lbs., 2£ tons, 15| cwt., and 1-125 tons. 

3. An article which cost £33 6s. 8d. was sold for £37 10s. Od. What 
was the gain per cent. ? 

4. At what rate per cent, will £306 5s. Od. produce £1 0s. 5d. per month ? 

5. Find the cost of papering a room 30 ft. long, 25 ft. wide, and 12 ft. 
6 in. high with paper 1 ft. 6 ins. wide at lOd. per yard. 



363 



14-. i 

1. The following table gives the sums assessed for Income Tax for the 
last five years of the last century. Find the totals for the several years. 



Years 


Land and Houses 


J J us in ess 


Investments 


Salaries 


Totals 


1895-6 


145,917,380 


271,768,638 


36,394,180 


33,878,682 





1896-7 


147,329,579 


284.400,461 


36,127,937 


35,806,653 


— ■ 


1897-8 


148,146,174 


303,598,980 


35,966,088 


37,499,958 





1898-9 


153,110,123 


318,555,003 


36,703,116 


39,861,208 


— • 


1899-1900 


153,875,858 


332,149,361 


36,165,000 


42,678,520 






or f |- of a ton ? 



2. Which is the greater, and by how many grams — a thousand kilograms 
[1 gram = -035 ounce.] 

3. Make out the following contractor's bill, deducting 5 per cent, discount : 
To 300,000 bricks at 35s. per 1000. 

,, 240 tons lime at 25s. per ton. 

„ 670 yd. gravel at 12s. 6d. per yd. 

,, 250 yd. sand at 17s. 6d. per yd. 

,, cartage lime at Is. 6d. per ton. 

,, ,, sand and gravel at 9d. per yd. 

4. Find, to the nearest penny, the difference between the Simple and 
the Compound Interest on £6310 15s. Od. for 3 years at 4 per cent, per annum. 

5. The area of a square is 1722-25 sq. ft. Find (in yards, feet, and inches) 
the length of the side. 



ARITHMETIC (Written Graded Test : Problems). 

[Test 10.] 
For Instructions, see pp. 298-300. For Norms, see Table L., p. 404. 

Age 7-. 

1. There are 7 oranges in my basket, 11 in yours, and 9 in Jack's. 
How many are there altogether ? 

2. I have 12 apples. How many more must I buy to make 20 ? 

3. How many legs are there on 9 sheep ? 

4. 12 Germans attacked us. We shot 6 ; and 2 ran away. How many 
were left to be taken prisoners ? 

5. Share one shilling equally among 6 children. How much would 
each have ? 

Age 8-. 

1. This strip of tape is 1 ft. 4 ins. long. How many inches can I cut 
it up into ? 

2. I have just smashed 17 eggs ; and have 43 left. How many dozen 
did I have to begin with ? 

3. How many sixpenny pop-guns can I buy with four shillings and six 
pence ? 

4. I have bought a cake for Is. 2d., and some jam for 5d. How much 
change ought I to have out of 3 shillings ? 

5. In the front of my house there are five windows, with nine panes in 
each. Some boys have broken several panes. Thirty are left unbroken. 
How many want mending ? 

(') The age assigned to these problems is purely conventional, and is intended merely to mark a further 
year's instruction in arithmetic beyond the stage of age 13- (Standard VII). 



364 

Age 9-. 

1. I have lost a purse containing a pound note, 3 ten-shilling notes, 
half a crown, 4 sixpences, and 9 halfpennies. How much have I lost 
altogether ? 

2. If I can buy two pounds of red paint for 6d., how much shall I pay 
for 7 lbs. ? 

3. On Fido's grave we raised a mound of stones. Mother put 50 pebbles, 
and my six brothers and I put 11 each. How many stones were there in 
the heap ? 

4. Mary had 3 times as much money as John. John had sixpence more 
than Harry. Harry had half a crown. How much had they altogether ? 

5. My wife and I have just bought tickets for Liverpool. How much 
change have we left out of a five-pound note ? (Fare to Liverpool, 32s. 6d. 
each.) 

Age 10-. 

1. Tom had 13s. 9d., Jack had 6s. lid., and Nellie had 17s. 7d. With 
this money they bought their mother a present, and received 2s. 6d. back as 
change. What did the present cost ? 

2. Altogether there are 34 medals in these two boxes. One contains 
8 more than the other. How many are there in each box ? 

3. The King left Windsor at 10 minutes past 10 this morning, and 
reached London at a quarter to twelve. How long did the journey take him ? 

4. I have just bought 3 jars of raspberry jam at 1/1 J a jar ; 3| lbs. of 
butter at 1/2 per lb. ; 5 lbs. of tea at 1/10 per lb. ; 7 lbs. of sugar at 2Jd« 
per lb. How much have I left out of £2 ? 

5. How high is the floor of my room from the ground floor of the house ? 
There are 14 steps on the staircase leading up to it, and each step rises 
6 J inches. 

Age 11-. 

1. In 1916 the Germans and Austrians had at least 2,600,000 fighting 
against Russia, 1,800,000 fighting against France, England, and Belgium, 
and 400,000 fighting against Italy. Let us suppose that altogether they had 
6,000,000 available as soldiers. How many were left to be called up later on ? 

2. A postman told me this morning that he walked 19 miles a day for 6 
days a week and 8 miles on Sunday. How many miles will he walk in a year ? 

3. Write down the figures 789 in every possible way : 789, 798, etc., 
and add up the total. 

4. A rich and a poor girl live together and pay 17s. 6d. per week for 
their room. The rich girl agrees to pay twice as much as the poor girl. How 
much does each pay ? 

5. If an aeroplane can fly from here to Norton in 45 minutes, how long 
would it take to fly to Easton and back without stopping ? (Distance to 
Norton, 40 miles ; to Easton, 18 miles.) 

Age 12-. 

1. A statue in plaster of Paris weighed 6 stns. 6 lbs. when it was com- 
pletely dry. In drying, plaster of Paris loses water to the extent of three- 
fifths of its weight. What was the original weight of the statue when soft 
and wet ? 

2. How many penny stamps will just cover a sheet of foolscap paper ? 
(A sheet of foolscap measures 12 J in. by 8 in. ; a penny stamp is 1 in. by f in.) 



365 

3. The average age of 6 children is 14 years 8 months. The oldest is 
18 years old. What is the average age of the remainder ? 

4. Under the National Insurance Act Mrs. Smith received a sickness 
benefit of 7s. 6d. a week for 26 weeks, and afterwards a disablement allow- 
ance for 5 years 2 months at 5s. per week. What was the total amount 
received ? 

5. A soldier's step is 2J ft. At quick march he takes 108 steps per 
minute. How far could he march in 3 hours ? 

Age 13-. 

1. Mr. Miles' classroom is 24 ft. long, 17 ft. 6 ins. wide, and 10 ft. high. 
By the regulations each child must have on an average at least 100 cubic 
feet of air space. How many children can he accommodate ? 

2. If a frog spends 15 per cent, of its time in the water, and lives to 
the age of 16 years, how many days does it spend on land ? 

3. How many hours do you spend at lessons in one term of 13 weeks ? 
(Lessons from 9.15 a.m. to 12 noon in the morning, and from 2.10 to 4.25 
in the afternoon, with ten minutes' play in the morning and ten minutes' 
play in the afternoon.) 

4. How long will it take an English cruiser steaming at \ mile per 
minute to overtake a German battleship 10 miles ahead of her, if the battle- 
ship steams at J mile per minute ? 

5. The foreman earns 32s. per week and his two assistants 25s. per 
week each, and the 10 men under him earn 16s. per week each. What is 
the average wage expressed as the decimal of £1 ? 

Age 14-. 1 

1. Last week I burnt 12 tons of coal at 64s. a ton. I then bought a large 
quantity of coke at 48s. a ton, and mixed it with the remainder of the coal 
in the proportion of 3 parts coke to 5 parts coal. I find I use only 11 tons a 
week of the slow-burning mixture. How much money a week am I saving 
by this method ? 

2. A cube of marble whose edge is 1 \ ft. in length is lowered to the bottom 
of a deep rectangular tank, 5 ft. 6 in. long and 4 ft. 3 in. broad. The tank 
is part of a fountain, and is usually about half full of water. How much 
was the surface of the water raised by the complete immersion of the 
stone ? 

3. Last July the average temperature from the 9th to the 16th (including 
both these days) was 65-8° ; and from the 10th to the 17th (including both 
these days) it was 67*5°. On July 9th it was 65°. What was it, therefore, 
on July 17th ? 

4. Travelling from Aytown to Extown, 40 miles away, a man ran his 
car at 20 miles per hour. At Kewtown he stopped for 10 minutes for more 
petrol ; and at Veetown, 5 miles further on, he had to return to Kewtown 
for a pump he had forgotten. At what steady speed would he have to return 
from Extown to Aytown (without any stoppages) to take the same time 
coming back as he did going ? 

5. From a cistern which is |- full 300 litres of oil leak away. 700 litres 
are then added, and the cistern is found to be -| full. How many gallons 
will it hold ? [1 gallon = 4-54 litres.] 

(*) See note, page 263. 



366 

ARITHMETIC (Written Ungraded Tests). 

[Tests 11 to 14]. 

Four Fundamental Rules. 1 

For Instructions, see pp. 301-2. For Norms, see Tables LI.-LIV., pp. 405-6. 

Test 11. (i) ADDITION. 



9 2 


4 5 


3 6 


8 4 


4 6 


2 3 


7 8 


9 6 


3 4 


6 2 


2 7 


3 7 


9 3 


7 8 


9 2 


6 4 


2 3 


8 9 


6 2 


5 9 


5 4 


9 8 


5 2 


5 3 


7 9 


5 8 


9 2 


6 8 


5 9 


7 7 


9 5 


7 6 


3 4 


6 9 


4 8 


2 5 


3 5 


7 4 


8 6 


8 6 


7 6 


3 8 


2 5 


8 3 


9 7 


7 9 


2 7 


4 5 


7 9 


9 5 


9 8 


5 9 


3 6 


5 2 


5 8 


6 4 


5 4 


7 9 


5 3 


6 3 


5 3 


9 7 


8 3 


6 7 


4 6 


5 3 


6 9 


6 2 


6 8 


3 9 


4 8 


4 5 


9 5 


8 9 


8 5 


7 6 


2 5 


9 6 


3 7 


4 2 


8 5 


4 6 


8 9 


3 5 


2 5 


6 7 


5 9 


5 4 


9 4 


3 6 


6 8 


5 7 


4 7 


8 4 


4 2 


7 2 


3 2 


2 9 


3 7 


4 5 


2 4 


8 4 


2 4 


4 2 


3 7 


9 6 


8 5 


3 6 


6 8 


8 4 


7 3 


3 9 


9 7 


2 3 


2 2 


5 3 


7 7 


9 8 


5 9 


4 2 


5 3 


8 7 


4 9 


5 4 


7 9 


5 2 


7 2 


2 3 


5 8 


8 2 


4 5 


9 6 


8 6 


6 3 


4 8 


7 4 


8 3 


9 8 


9 6 


3 6 


3 7 


2 8 


7 5 


8 6 


2 5 


8 9 


4 6 


3 9 


2 5 


4 7 


8 4 


6 3 


9 3 


5 2 


5 9 


6 4 


5 9 


6 7 


3 4 


9 8 


6 9 


5 8 


6 7 


9 7 


3 4 


9 2 


4 3 


6 8 


6 8 


2 3 


2 5 


8 7 


8 9 


4 5 


2 5 


7 5 


2 6 


9 5 


3 4 


7 9 


9 2 


3 2 


7 5 


7 3 


7 3 


4 6 


9 5 


4 9 


2 5 


9 4 


8 7 


5 9 


2 6 


5 2 


6 4 


3 7 


6 8 


7 3 


4 2 


2 8 







t 1 ) The test-aheets, printed for the children, should, of course, be set up in type considerably larger 
than the above, — 12 point at least, with modern face. 



367 



Test 12. (ii) SUBTRACTION. 

9802 7721 4944 3208 5831 
6246 1841 1295 1738 3676 



8781 8079 3253 5106 8756 
5795 4599 2195 2892 3569 



9653 7634 7812 5014 4952 
3873 4648 3178 1694 2889 



7206 6265 9231 9843 9136 
2321 3575 1282 1769 7465 



6403 9405 9107 5822 7029 
4318 5784 4376 1893 3372 



5701 S502 9640 4438 3402 
2694 3742 5481 1572 1425 



7109 7916 5039 6054 8518 
4263 2958 3748 2863 1599 



6835 6257 7364 4678 8670 
3469 1687 5379 2987 6595 



9346 8212 7531 9213 9114 
1966 5831 1457 6482 4167 



3952 8065 9703 9427 6681 
2898 6574 6549 2796 4696 



368 



Test 13. (iii) MULTIPLICATION. 

2498 7528 9482 3574 2638 
2 3 4 5 6 



265 9587 5763 6753 37 4 9 

7 8 9 4 7 



7549 2968 3469 4928 3756 
6 5 3 9 2 



2634 5689 5392 7629 8527 
8 2 4 5 8 



756 3957 7659 4593 4392 
6 6 9 3 7 



3548 4823 6874 6428 3274 
5 9 4 6 2 



7286 4936 2847 5928 8493 
3 8 5 9 3 



9627 8634 3587 3647 6852 
7 4 6 8 2 



5927 7463 5369 4692 8295 
4 9 5 6 8 



7493 3458 5267 2938 4756 

2 7 3 6 4 



369 

Test 14. (iv) DIVISION. 
2)1673S 3)13749 4)33500 5)47670 6)4456 



7)6084 4 8)53832 9)57168 3)22887 8)66760 



2)14850 9)43182 7)52045 4)38492 6)39234 



5)34135 3)17796 9)66141 6)31722 8)27832 



7)37086 5)21475 4)26156 2)12494 5)18930 



2)19670 7)26348 3)23592 9)77868 4)1948 



)46608 6)56184 7)32151 8)67936 6)37710 



9)70668 4)38608 3)11874 5)16340 2)15186 



3)19281 8)61080 6)44634 2)16492 9)84924 



4)26936 7)43946 5)47285 4)11752 6)28536 



2 B 



APPENDIX II. 

MEDIAN SPECIMENS OF HANDWRITING, DRAWING, AND 
COMPOSITION FOR EACH AGE. 



Figures 43 to 52. 

WRITING (QUALITY) : (TEST 16) 

Median Samples for Each Age 

Facsimile reproductions, original size. 
For description, see page 309. 



371 

Figure 43. 

AGE 5-. 






372 

Figure 44 (a). 

AGE 6-. 




373 



Figure 44 (6) 
AGE 6- {continued), 



(L 







374 



Figure 45. 
AGE 7-. 








& )}}l in 

a o v i nl 




375 

Figure 46. 
AGE 8-. 









>-j<=d^» (310 



£?^<^ 






376 



FlGUBE 47. 



AGE 9-. 




377 



Figure 48. 



AGE 10-. 







^> OS 



378 



Figure 49. 
AGE 11-. 





fa ^ <^H 



=5 QD £ < J ^ 



379 




Figure 50. 




AGE 12-. 








3 £ 


H 






^ pi- 


5 


^ £ 


P 



380 



Figure 51. 



AGE 13-. 







CO 

CO 

| 




• 


^ 


9 

• 


£> 


£ 


• 


* 


^n 




P^> CO 



381 



J 



r. 



1 



t: 



■<fs* 





Figure 52. 




AGE 14-. 








^ 


=3 


«=^5 


rs 


^ ^ 


^3 


^ 


& 


C^S 


o3 


d: 


QC^ 


cS 


=? 


£ 



N 



Figures 53 to 64. 
DRAWING (QUALITY): (TEST 16) 

Median Samples for Early Age. 

Facsimile reproductions, original size. 
For description, see pages 318 to 325. 



383 



Figure 53. 



AGE 3-. 




384 



Figure 54. 



AGE 4 



^Bhk 



f 




385 



Figure 55. 



AGE 5 




2 c 



386 



Figure 56. 



AGE 6-. 




387 



Figure 57. 



AGE 7-. 




3S8 



Figure 58. 



AGE 8-. 




389 



Figure 59. 



AGE 9 




390 



Figure 60. 



AGE 10-. 





391 



Figure 61. 



AGE 11-. 




392 



Figure 62, 



AGE 12-. 




•&oLdjj/t 



393 



FlGUBE 63. 



AGE 13-. 







iAt< ' 3 e or 4& 



394 



Figure 64. 



AGE 14 




395 



COMPOSITION (Median Samples for Normal Children of Each Age). 

[Test 20.] 
See pages 330 to 331. 

Age 7-. 
We do singing in school. 
Sometimes we have sums 
our school is very nice 
We have riting in shool. 
our techers are very nice 

Age 8-. 
SCHOOL 
We come to School evry day. I like going to School. 
And I like doing lesons. Their are a lot of teachers 
And their are a lot of boys in our room, at School 
we lern reading and speling and somtimes we have panting 
We must not be late for School 
When it wet we go in to the hall to play 
some days we do drill. 

Age 9-. 
COMPOSTION. 
SCHOOL 
I like school very much because we have nice lessons. I 
like painting and sowing best of all I am making a night- 
gound. Today I have been doing sums. I do mony 1 sums 
in this class. Then we do righting and then we have play 
and then we do some more lessons. In our room there is a 
blackbord and cubbords and desks and inkwells and there 

is pictures on the wall. Miss is the Headmisstreses name 

and miss is the name of my teachers name. She is a 
very kind teacher friday if we been good our teacher 
tells vis a story. 

Age 10-. 

SCHOOL. 
We go to school to learn. The lessons are sums, 
Dictation, spelling, and drawing and there are teachers to 
teach us. We do arithmetic every morning. On Tuesday 
we do histry and on friday (half ) 2 afternoon we do drawing. 
In some schools, there are three halls one for the boys and 
girls and infants. I go to the. . . .school I am in Class 5 

(*) Money. ( 2 ) The first syllable of "afternoon "^misspelt and erased. 



396 

standard 4. At playtime we go out into the playground 
to play but when it rains we stay in. When it snows we 
can go sliding, because there is a tap in the playground 
and the water frezes. The school I go to is a very big 
biulding it has very near a thousand children I like 
arithmetic very much and it is my faverit lesson. We are 
learning a very interresting piece of poetry which is called 
The (s) Spanish armada, it tells us about Drake and about 
a fight at sea 

Age 11-. 
COMPOSITION. 
SCHOOL. 
School is a good place for boys and girls to go to. 
Generaly they go every morning and afternoon to learn 
History and Gography and do arithmetic and a lot of 
other things. It is a good thing that we have schools, 
because if we did not have them we could not go out to 
work because we could not read or write. There are seven 
classes in our school and the headmasters' room. The 
boys have got a big playground so have the girls, but the 
infants have got the smallest playground. We come to 
school every morning when the bells rings After we had 
our names called we start work. Every morning we have 
scripture. After scripture is over we have Arithmetic. 
We go Swimming at a quarter past two on every Wensday, 
most boys in our class can swim. It teaches us to try and 
save lives if we can swim. Another lesson I like is Drill 
because it strenthens your body. Sometimes we practice 
Fire drill which sometimes is nessesary. Prizes are given 
for best work. 

Age 12- 

" SCHOOL." 

I am now going to tell you about school. We have 
to go to school every day until we are fourteen, then we go 
out to earn our own living. I am nearly thirteen now 
and I shall soon be leaving school. I shall be sorry as I 
am very fond of school. 

I think school is very useful for girls because if we 
learn all our work well it helps us with our education. 
Our school has a very good name and we ought to be 
proud of it. 

We have very interesting lessons, but I think the 
chief lesson I like best of all is history because it tells us 
about the kind of things we had in olden days. 

When children first start school they go to a part 



397 

what we call the infants, there they have rocking horses 
and beads to thread on string. Soon they are put in 
another class and then when they have learnt enough they 
go into the Big Girls and in the Big Boys if it is a boy. 
We go to school at 9 a clock and come home at twelve for 
our dinner, and go back again at 2 and then go home to 
tea at half past four. Each teacher has a class and every 
year we go up into a higher class. On Tuesday our head- 
mistress takes us for litrature. 

Age 13-. 

COMPOSITION ON SCHOOL. 

Schools are big buildings all over London where we 
are taught to learn special subjects which we will want to 
know about in after life. Our parents pay taxes, out of 
which they help to pay for us to go to school. 

At school there are two or three divisions. 1) The 
Girls 2) The Infants 3) The Boys. At our school we 
have nine classes with teachers. There are different kinds 
of schools, such as Private Schools, secondry Schools, and 
Council Schools. In some countries there are no schools 
and the poor people grow up ignorant. 

A child can get in school at five years of age and leave 
at fourteen but this will soon be altered. "When you are 
fourteen if you have been good at your work and attend- 
ance, the headmaster gives you a good reference. Some 
boys go in for schollarships, if they win they go to a higher 
school. If they nearly win they go to a central school 
where they stay till they are sixteen. 

There are different sorts of lessons, Grammar, Com- 
position, Science, Drill, Drawing, Arithmetic, and English. 

I have read many different books at school such 
as " John Halifax, Gentleman." " Westward Hoe ! " 
" Robinson Crusoe," and " History Books." " John 
Halifax," describes the life of a poor, friendless boy till 
manhood. 

My favourite subjects are : — science and crayon or 
pastal drawing. 

On the whole schools are very useful places. 

Age U-. 

ESSAY OX " SCHOOL." 
A school is a large building with many rooms in it ; 
they are built for children to be educated. There are 
usually three stories ; the " infants " on the bottom floor, 
the " girls " next and the boys up the top. 



398 

King Alfred the Great first invented schools and the 
first one was built in his time. In the present day children 
can go free but in Alfred's time only the Lords and Barons 
sons and daughters could go because the poorer class of 
people could not aford to send their children to school. 

Another reason why we are sent to school is, that if 
we leave we may be able to go out to work and get on in 
the world when we are older. It is also a good thing to 
have school because ib keeps some children out of the 
streets. 

There are different kinds of schools for instant L,C.C. 
Schools, Central Schools, Colleges, etr. In College the 
boy's sleep there. There sleeping place is called a dormitry. 
And they have studies four boys to one study. Only rich 
men's sons go to College. There are also night classes of 
an evening where older children go, some learn typewriting 
and some learn Shorthand and " french." 

We have arithmetic which is very useful when we go 
out to business. We have painting and drawing which is 
very useful for any one who wants to go in for that sort 
of work. Some boys go in for Sports which I think is 
very good exercise. 

Thus I think School is the most important training a 
person can possibly have, it is also the happiest time of 
life. 



APPENDIX III. 



TABLES OF NORMS FOR THE VARIOUS SCHOLASTIC TESTS. 



TABLE XXXIX. 

Test l.-GRADED READING TEST (Accuracy). 
Vocabulary Test. 

Number of Words Correctly Read. 





Boys. 


Girls. 


Mental Defectives. 




Age. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Average 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Borderline. 


5- 

6- 

7 — 

8- 

9- 

10- 

11- 

12- 

13- 

14- 


15-1 
23-2 
33-4 
42-8 
54-3 
64-5 
73-6 
82-5 
91-4 
[101-6] 


7-3 
12-1 
15-3 
13-1 
15-0 
14-2 
13-7 
12-6 
12-3 
[9-9] 


13-2 
25-3 
38-9 
49-1 
58-7 
66-7 
76-0 
86-3 
96-8 
[103-4] 


5-4 
10-3 
17-8 
16-1 
14-2 
13-5 
12-0 
10-1 
14-2 
[11-3] 


2-0 
3-8 
6-7 
11-0 
19-2 
25-3 
28-4 
31-3 
34-3 


1-8 

2-1 

4-5 

6-1 

8-3 

9-5 

12-1 

11-4 

11-9 


5 
11 
18 
23 
35 
42 
51 
58 
70 



TABLE XL. 

Test 3.-DISC0NTINU0US UNGRADED READING TEST (Accuracy). 

Two- and Three- Letter Monosyllables. 

Number of Words Correctly Read (Without Time Limit). 







Mental Defectives. 




Age. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Borderline. 


6- 

7- 
8- 
9- 
10- 
11- 
12- 
13- 
14- 




[0-6] 

2-3 

8-2 

21-4 

52-8 

93*6 

124-8 

161-7 

183-9 


2-8 
6-2 
12-4 
19-0 
24-1 
30-9 
28-8 
34-3 
29-7 


13 

30 
65 
106 
134 
168 
183 
190 
194 



399 



400 

TABLE XLI. 
Test 3 —DISCONTINUOUS UNGRADED READING TEST (Speed). 

Two- and Three-Letter Monosyllables. 

Number of Words Correctly Read in One Minute. 





Boys. 


Girls. 


Mental Defectives. 




Age. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Borderline. 


6- 

7— 

8— 

9 — 

10- 

11- 

12 — 

13- 

14- 


22-2 

52-4 

65-0 

82-5 

100-8 

108-7 

119-5 

123-6 

127-3 


18-6 
22-1 
15-4 
21-4 
19-5 
13-8 
14-3 
9-9 
8-2 


25-6 

57-3 

71-1 

86-3 

103-5 

112-8 

123-4 

128-9 

130-7 


15-5 
24-2 
18-5 
15-3 
17-4 
13-0 
11-7 
12-6 
11-3 


[0-0] 

[1-1] 

[4-0] 

12-3 

18-8 

25-7 

31-9 

35-6 

38-5 


[0-6] 
[1-6] 
[3,8] 
5-7 
9-1 
10-8 
13-9 
11-2 
12-3 


[2] 

[8] 

17 

26 

33 

41 

50 

5S 

64 



TABLE XLII. 
Test 4— READING : (DIRECTIONS TEST : Individual Examination). 

Comprehension. 

Number of Directions Rightly Performed. 





Boys. 


Girls. 


Mental Defectives. 




Age. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Borderline. 


5 — 
6- 

7- 
8- 
9- 
10- 
11- 
12- 
13- 
14- 


0-8 
3-9 

9-4 
12-1 

[13-2] 
[14-8] 
[15-7] 
[15-9] 
[16-2] 
[16-4] 


1-1 

2 -2 
3-8 
31 

[2-3] 
[1-5] 
[1-1] 
[1-2] 
[1-1] 
[1-4] 


0-5 
3-2 

9-0 
12-4 

[13-9] 
[15-1] 
[15-5] 
[15-8] 
[16-3] 
[16-1] 


0-8 
1-9 
4-3 
3-4 

[1-9] 
[1-2] 
[1-0] 
[1-3] 
[1-3] 
[1-2] 


[0-0] 
0-3 
0-8 
1-4 
2-5 
3-9 
4-9 
5-6 


[0-3] 
[0-4] 
0-6 
0-9 
1-3 
1-8 
'2-2 
1-9 


1 
o 

3 

4-5 

7 

9 

11 

12 



401 



TABLE XLIII. 

Test 5.-READING (CONTINUOUS PROSE). 

Speed. 

Time in Minutes and Seconds. 









Boys. 


Girls. 


Age. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


7 — 
8- 
9- 
10- 
11- 
12- 
13- 
14- 






[4' 24 • 3"] 
2' 55-6" 
2' 1-4" 
1' 31-5" 
1' 18-2" 
1' 11-4" 
1' 7-6" 
1' 5-7" 


[141-3"] 
81 • 7" 
60-2 
31-3 
16-3" 
4-6" 
3-8" 
1-9" 


[4' 12-2"] 
2' 43-5" 
1' 54-7" 
l'26-4" 
1' 3 6 -4" 
1' 12-3" 
1' 8-8" 
1' 4-3" 


[124 • 9"] 

67 • 8" 

52 • 6" 

35-0" 

20 • 5" 

4-4" 

3-4" 

2-1" 



TABLE XLIV. 

Test 5.-READING (CONTINUOUS PROSE). 
Accuracy. 

Number of Errors. 









Boys. 


Girls. 


Age. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


7 — 
8- 
9- 
10- 
11- 
12- 
13- 
14- 






[24 • 5] 
15-9 
9-6 
3-1 
2-1 
1-6 
0-8 
0-4 


[18-2] 
15-1 
8-2 
4-6 
2-5 
1-3 
0-8 
0-6 


[23-4] 
14-7 
8-1 
2-3 
1-9 
1-4 
0-7 
0-2 


[21-3] 
12-2 
10-0 
4-3 
31 
1-1 
0-5 
0-6 



2 D 



402 



TABLE XLV. 

Test 5.— READING (CONTINUOUS PROSE). 
Comprehension. 

Number of Questions Correctly Answered. 





Boys. 


Girls 


Age. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


7- 
8- 
9 — 
10- 
11- 
12- 
13- 
14- 






[4-1] 
7-9 
9-4 
11-9 
12-6 
13-8 
14-8 
15-7 


[2-0] 
1-5 
1-6 
2-1 
3-2 
31 
2-6 
31 


[4-4] 
7-8 
9-8 
12-2 
13-1 
14-2 
15-5 
16-0 


[1-9] 
21 

2-5 
2-4 
2-6 
30 
2-5 
2-6 



TABLE XLVI. 

Test 6— SPELLING. 

Number of Correct Words. 





Boys. 


Girls. 


Mental Defectives. 




Age. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Average 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Borderline. 


6— 


16-7 


5-1 


14-2 


4-3 


0-0 


0-0 





7 — 


26-5 


6-4 


26-9 


6-5 


0-2 


1-3 


1 


8— 


35-6 


8-6 


35-8 


6-9 


2-1 


2-1 


6 


9 — 


44-7 


8-0 


46-2 


7-3 


4-2 


3-2 


15 


10- 


52-3 


9-8 


58-4 


10-3 


7-9 


6-4 


22 


11 — 


61-2 


11-5 


69-0 


9-7 


12-3 


7-6 


29 


12 — 


73-0 


12-4 


77-2 


10-6 


15-9 


5-9 


34 


13- 


80-6 


11-3 


86-9 


12-2 


19-7 


71 


37 


14— 


91-8 


8-7 


93-2 


10-4 


21-8 


6-2 


39 



403 

TABLE XLVII. 
Test 7 —DICTATION. 

Number of Correct Letters. 





Boys. 


Girls. 


Mental De^citves. 




Age. 


Average 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Borderline. 


6 — 

7 — 
8- 
9- 

10- 
11 — 
12- 
13- 
14- 


68-6 
131-8 
216-3 
309-0 
362-5 
397-4 
440-9 
467-7 
478-1 


50-9 
52-7 
73-3 
63-5 
58-6 
45-2 
32-8 
47-2 
31-3 


63-6 
134-3 
227-4 
313-5 

364-2 
405-2 
451-7 
476-1 
482-9 


46-8 
48-5 
65-2 
82-4 
51-6 
39-1 
40-7 
29-1 
34-4 


0-0 
0-7 
7-3 
19-5 
28-3 
42-5 
51-2 
61-8 
72-3 


0-0 
2-1 
6-3 
13-2 
16-2 
15-4 
21-6 
26-2 
27-5 




6 

23 

52 

70 

115 

121 

141 

164 



TABLE XLVIII. 

Test 8.-ARITHMETIC (Oral Test). 

Number of Sums Correctly Answered. 





Boys. 


Girls. 


Mental Defectives. 




Age. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Borderline. 


4- 
5— 

6— 

7 — 

8- 

9— 

10- 

11 — 

12 — 
13- 
14- 


3-8 
14-3 
25-2 
34-8 
46-6 
56-5 
67-7 
75-3 
86-4 
94-2 
103-2 


6-2 

8-5 

9-2 

10-5 

10-6 

11-4 

12-1 

10-3 

9-6 

11-2 

8-3 


4-1 
15-0 
24-8 
35-2 
44-3 
35-4 
64-6 
72-9 
83-7 
93-5 
102-8 


5-7 

7-3 

8-9 

9-6 

11-3 

11-9 

13-2 

9-1 

9-8 

10-7 

11-1 


1-3 
4-9 
9-8 
13-2 
18-5 
24-2 
30-6 
34-8 
38-3 


3-6 
4-5 
8-3 
11-7 
16-4 
18-2 
20-3 
17-3 
18-8 


7 
11 
16 
23 
31 
40 
48 
55 
60 



404 



TABLE XLIX. 

Test 9.-ARITHMETIC (Written Test). 
Mechanical. 

Number of Sums Correctly Answered. 





Bots. 


Girls. 


Mental Defectives. 




Age. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Borderline. 


7- 
8 — 
9- 
10- 
11- 
12- 
13- 
14- 


2-7 
7-3 
12-5 
18-1 
73-0 
26-4 
30-5 
33-8 


4-1 
5-3 
5-1 
5-8 
4-3 
4-8 
4-5 
3-9 


2-9 
7-6 
12 1 
17-3 
20-6 
24-2 
28-4 
29-3 


3-8 
5-0 
4-9 
5-3 
4-6 
4-1 
5-3 
5-9 


[0-0] 
[0-0] 
[0-1] 
0-4 
1-8 
2-8 
4-2 
5-3 


[0] 
[0] 
[0-4] 
0-8 
0-9 
1-4 
2-7 
2-6 


[0] 
[0] 

[1] 

4 

6 
10 
13 
14 



TABLE L. 

Test 10— ARITHMETIC (Written Test). 
Problems. 

Number of Sums Correctly Answered. 





Boys. 


Girls. 


Mental Defectives. 




Age. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Borderline. 


7 — 
8- 
9- 
10- 
11- 
12- 
13- 
14- 


2-5 
8-6 
13-9 
17-8 
24-3 
29-7 
32-8 
34-5 


3-9 
5-1 

5-4 
6-2 
5-1 
4-8 
5-6 
4-2 


2-8 
7-4 
11-5 
15-4 
19-7 
24-1 
28-8 
30-0 


41 

4-7 
5-3 
8-0 
6-7 
5-6 
6-2 
5-9 


[0-0] 
[0-0] 
[0-0] 
[0-2] 
1-1 
2-6 
4-4 
5-0 


[0] 
[0] 
[0-4] 
[1-3] 
2-5 
3-4 
3-1 
3-2 


[0] 
[0] 

1 

3 

7 

9 

11 

12 



405 



TABLE LI. 

ARITHMETIC. (Four Fundamental Rules.) 

Test 11— (i.) Addition. 

Number of Correct Figures in Answers {"Hundreds" counting as 
part of " Tens). 





Boys. 


Girls. 


Mental Defectives. 




Age. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Borderline. 


• 6— 
7 — 

8- 
9 — 
10- 
11- 
12- 
13- 
14- 


6-9 
9-7 
13-8 
17-8 
21-4 
24-7 
29-6 
32-5 
33 6 


2-2 
3-0 
5-2 
8-1 
8-5 
9-8 

11-2 
9-3 

10-1 


6-7 
9-5 
14-4 
17-6 
22-5 
27-4 
32-2 
30-8 
31-9 


2-5 
3-6 
8-0 
6-3 
7-3 
9-4 
9-7 
13-1 
15-2 


0-0 
0-0 
0-7 
1-8 
3-9 
6-5 
9-2 
13-4 
16-5 


0-2 
0-4 
0-8 
11 
2-3 
3-5 
6-2 
5-7 
6-7 






2 

3 

8 

12 

17 

22 

29 



TABLE LII. 

ARITHMETIC. (Four Fundamental Rules.) 

Test 12. — (ii.) Subtraction. 

Number of Correct Figures in Answers. 





Boys. 


Girls. 


Mental Defectives. 




Age. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Borderline. 


6— 

7— 
8- 
9- 
10- 
11- 
12- 
13- 
14- 


7-2 
18-7 
28-3 
34-7 
43-8 
50-2 
56-0 
61-7 
68-5 


4-8 
7-2 
13-2 
16-3 
20-4 
26-6 
19-8 
22-6 
24-2 


7-5 
18-3 
27-0 
34-8 
42-4 
48-3 
54-8 
59-9 
64-7 


3-0 
11-2 
13-6 
18-4 
19-2 
21-7 
22-8 
24-8 
26-1 


0-0 

0-0 

0-4 

1-3 

4-9 

7-7 

11-1 

17-3 

20-1 


0-0 
0-3 
1-2 
2-3 

5-7 
6-2 
7-8 
6-9 
8-3 






3 

4 

9 

16 

27 

33 

39 



406 



TABLE LIII. 

ARITHMETIC. (Four Fundamental Rules.) 
Test 13. — (iii.) Multiplication. 

Number of Correct Figures in Answers ( " Ten Thousands " counting 
as part of " Thousands "). 





Boys. 


Girls. 


Mental Defectives. 




Age. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Borderline. 


6 — 

7— 
8- 
9- 
10- 
11- 
12- 
13- 
14- 


5-6 
14-1 
25-9 
32-8 
43-9 
50-2 
56-3 
66-1 
71-5 


2-9 
6-5 
9-6 
15-7 
25 1 
24-3 
19-4 
21-0 
22-8 


5-8 
14-5 
26-8 
33-2 
44-1 
48-4 
57-1 
65-4 
73-0 


2-1 
7-4 
13-7 
17-6 
18-0 
20-5 
26-7 
25-2 
26-3 


0-0 
0-0 
0-0 
1-6 

2-8 

4-7 

8-7 

14-4 

19-6 


0-0 
0-0 
0-5 
1-1 
2-6 
3-2 
6-3 
7-1 
8-4 






2 

3 

8 

14 

24 

35 

43 



TABLE LIV. 

ARITHMETIC. (Four Fundamental Rules.) 

Test 14. — (iv.) Division. 
Number of Correct Figures in Answers. 





Boys. 


Girls. 


Mental Defectives. 




Age. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Borderline. 


6— 

7 — 
8- 
9- 
10- 
11- 
12- 
13- 
14- 


0-0 
5-1 
15-2 
19-1 
28-3 
34-2 
38-7 
45-4 
53-3 


0-0 
6-1 
11-3 
15-2 
19-0 
23-1 
18-3 
19-8 
16-9 


0-0 

5-3 

14-7 

18-7 
27-2 
311 
38-2 
44-6 
53-5 


0-0 
6-8 
9-6 
13-3 
16-1 
22-3 
20-1 
21-7 
24-4 


0-0 
0-0 
0-0 
0-0 
0-4 
1-0 
1-9 
31 
4-4 


0-0 
0-0 
0-0 
0-2 
0-6 
1-3 
2-4 
3-7 
4-6 








1 

4 

6 

10 

13 

18 



407 



TABLE LV. 



Test 15.-WRITING (Speed). 

Number of Letters Written in Two Minutes. 





Boys. 


Girls. 


Mental Defectives. 




Age. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Borderline. 


6- 

7— 
8- 
9- 
10- 
11- 
12- 
13- 
14- 


20-7 
43-7 
72-4 
100-6 
128-0 
150-1 
171-8 
183-7 
184-2 


15-6 
22-8 
28-8 
40-9 
39-0 
38-3 
41-8 
52-4 
45-6 


19-9 
52-3 
81-1 
109-4 
141-7 
166-2 
179-9 
185-4 
191-2 


18-6 
26-7 
24-3 
38-2 
37-7 
35-0 
54-3 
58-2 
61-7 


[3-2] 
7-9 
12-5 
27-9 
38-1 
48-2 
61-7 
76-8 
81-2 


[4-8] 
6-1 
12-3 
20-4 
33-5 
32-5 
38-7 
43-6 
32-8 


8 

8 

19 

41 

60 

84 

110 

135 

160 



TABLE LVI. 
Test 16— WRITING (Quality). 

Expressed in Terms of Mental Age. 





Boys. 


Girls. 


Mental Defectives. 




Age. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Borderline 


5- 

6- 

7— 

8- 

9- 

10- 

11- 

12- 

13- 

14- 


5-4 

6-4 

7-5 

8-5 

9-4 

10-3 

11-3 

12-2 

13-2 

14-1 


0-8 
0-9 
0-8 
1-0 
1-2 
1-3 
1-1 
1-2 
11 
0-9 


5-6 

6-7 

7-6 

8-5 

9-6 

10-6 

11-7 

12-6 

13-5 

14-6 


0-9 
0-7 
11 
0-9 
1-2 
1-2 
0-9 
11 
1-4 
1-0 


(4-8) 
(4-8) 
5-4 
6-2 
6-9 
7-5 
8-1 
8-6 
8-9 


1-0 
1-9 
1-6 
1-3 
1-5 
1-5 
1-8 
1-7 
1-2 


5-9 

6-8 

7-5 

8-6 

9-4 

10-2 

11-2 

11-6 

12-4 



408 



TABLE LVII. 

Test 17.— DRAWING (Quality). 

Expressed in Terms of Mental Age, 





BOYS. 


GlBLS. 


Mental Defectives. 




Age. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Borderline. 


5 — 

6- 

7— 

8— 

9— 

10- 

11- 

12- 

13- 

14- 


5-4 

6-5 

7-4 

8-6 

9-7 

10-7 

11-6 

12-7 

13-4 

14-1 


1-0 
0-9 
1-0 
1-1 
1-2 
1-4 
1-1 
1-3 
1-4 
1-2 


5-6 

6-4 

7-5 

8-4 

9-2 

10-3 

11-4 

12-1 

13-5 

14-6 


0-8 
0-7 
0-8 
0-9 
1-1 
1-3 
1-2 
1-4 
1-3 
1-5 


4-3 

4-9 
5-4 
6-2 
6-8 
7-6 
8-3 
8-9 
9-3 


0-9 
1-9 
1-8 
1-2 
1-5 
1-9 
2-4 
2-2 
2-0 


6-0 

1-5 

7-4 

8-3 

9-2 

10-3 

11-2 

11-8 

12-5 



TABLES LVIII. 
Test 18— HANDWORK (Speed). 

Time Taken in Seconds to Reproduce Models of Twelve Pieces. 





Boys. 


Girls. 


Mental Defectives. 




Age. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Borderline. 


6- 


113 


63 


106 


78 











7 — 


77 


47 


79 


51 


176 


41 


103 


8- 


62 


31 


61 


36 


125 


32 


71 


9- 


51 


28 


56 


29 


101 


28 


62 


10- 


46 


29 


48 


32 


85 


23 


55 


11- 


42 


27 


44 


24 


66 


18 


39 


12- 


38 


21 


41 


28 


57 


21 


44 


13- 


31 


25 


34 


23 


53 


16 


45 


14- 


32 


19 


33 


26 


49 


14 


32 



409 



TABLE LIX. 
Test 19.— HANDWORK (Quality). 

Quality of Original Product Graded in Terms of Equivalent Mental 
Age of Normals. 





Boys. 


Girls. 


Mental Defectives, 




Age. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Borderline. 


6- 

7- 

8 — 

9 — 
10- 
11- 
12- 
13- 
14- 


6-6 

7-5 

8-8 

9-8 

10-9 

12-3 

131 

14-4 

14-2 


0-9 
0-9 
11 
1-2 
1-4 
1-5 
1-3 
1-5 
1-3 


6-3 

7-4 

8-3 

9-1 

10-2 

11-6 

12-0 

12-8 

13-8 


0-8 
0-9 
1-0 
1-3 
1-6 
1-3 
1-5 
1-6 
1-5 


4-3 
5-3 
6-4 
7-6 
9-0 
9-9 
10-3 
10-1 


2-1 
1-7 
1-3 
1-7 
1-8 
2-3 
2-1 
1-7 


6-0 

7-0 

7-7 

8-8 

10-4 

11-5 

12-0 

12-5 



TABLE LX. 

Test 20 —COMPOSITION (Speed). 
Essay on "School". 

Number of Words Written in Half an Hour. 





Boys. 


Girls. 


Mental Defectives. 




Age. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Borderline. 


7- 
8- 
9- 
10- 
11- 
12- 
13- 
14- 


21-2 
61-8 
99-4 
137-3 
156-8 
192-6 
216-1 
231-7 


19-3 
27-7 
44-6 
56-3 
48-2 
52-4 
65-8 
59-1 


27-2 
76-5 
104-6 
152-6 
184-7 
213-3 
239-2 
262-4 


26-1 

30-8 
52-0 
63-5 
59-7 
64-7 
68-9 
66-5 


[2-5] 

[4-3] 

12-6 

18-3 

25-1 


3-2 

5-1 

14-6 

16-0 

20-5 


6 
16 

48 
63 

77 



410 



TABLE LXI. 

Test 20 —COMPOSITION. (Quality) 
Essay on "School." 

Quality in Terms of Equivalent Mental Age. 





Bots. 


GlELS. 


Mental Defectives. 




Age. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Borderline. 


7 — 
8— 
9 — 
10- 
11- 
12- 
13- 
14- 


7-3 

8-3 
9-2 
10-1 
11-1 
12-0 
12-7 
13-9 


1-2 
0-9 
1-0 
1-3 
1-3 
1-5 
1-6 
1-5 


7-8 
8-6 
9-7 
11-0 
11-8 
131 
14-2 
14-8 


1-3 

1-1 

1-3 
1-6 
1-4 
1-7 
1-8 
1-5 


[6-0] 
6-7 

7-4 
6-9 


1-7 

2-0 
2-2 
1-9 


6-9 
7-5 
8-1 

8-5 



TABLE LXII. 

Test 20— COMPOSITION (Length of Sentences). 
Essay on "School." 

Average Number of Words per Sentence. 





Boys. 


Girls. 


Mental Defectives. 




Age. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Average. 


Standard 
Deviation. 


Average. 


Standard. 
Deviation. 


Borderline. 


7- 
8- 
9- 
10- 
11- 
12- 
13- 
14- 


5-7 
7-8 
11-3 
13-3 
14-1 
14-9 
15-7 
16-2 


1-6 

2-4 
1-9 

2-7 
1-8 
2-0 
1-6 
1-7 


7-3 
9-1 
11-5 
13-3 
14-6 
15-4 
15-9 
16-9 


2-3 
2-6 
2-3 
1-8 
1-7 
1-9 
2-1 
2-4 


5-3 

6-1 
7-0 

7-8 
8-4 


1-3 

1-5 
1-8 
1-9 
1-6 


8 

9 

11 

12 

13 



APPENDIX IV. 

SELECTED REFERENCES. 1 

Instructions for Giving the Binet-Simon Tests. 

1. — Binet, A., and Simon, Th. — The Development of Intelligence in 
Children. Translated by Elizabeth S. Kite. Publications of the Vineland 
Training School, New Jersey, 1916. pp. 336. 

(Chapters iv. and v. are American translations of the original 
1908 and 1911 scales as published in L'Annee Psychologique, xiv., 
pp. 1 et seq., and xvii., pp. 145 et seq.) 

2. — Binet, A., and Simon, Th. — A Method of Measuring the Develop- 
ment of Intelligence in Young Children. Translated by Clara H. Town. 
Chicago Medical Book Co., 1913. pp. 82. 

(An authorised American translation of Binet 's final instruc- 
tions for giving the tests, with the theoretical discussions contained 
in the preceding articles, as published in the Bulletin de la Societe 
Libre pour V Etude Psychologique de V Enfant, x., April, 1911.) 

3.- — Melville, 1ST. J. — Testing Juvenile Mentality. Lippincott Co., 1917. 
pp. I4z. ^ carefully compiled practical handbook describing a " uni- 

form " method for giving the tests to American children. The order 
recommended is somewhat involved.) 

Revisions of the Binet-Simon Tests. 

4. — Yerkes, R. M., Bridges, J. W., Haedwick, Rose S. — A Point 
Scale for Measuring Mental Ability. Warwick and York, 1915. pp. 218. 

(Contains materials and directions for using the Point Scale, 
with results of its application to normal and defective individuals.) 

5. — Terman, Lewis M. — The Measurement of Intelligence. G. G. Harrap 
and Co., 1919. pp. 362. 

(An explanatory guide for the " Stanford Revision and Ex- 
tension.") 
6. — Terman, L. M., Lyman, G., Ordahl, L., Galbreath, N., and 
Talbert, N. — The Stanford Revision and Extension of the Binet-Simon Scale 
for Measuring Intelligence. Warwick and York, 1917. p. 179. 

(Analysis of results of applying the Stanford Revision to over 
1000 children. Detailed discussions of the relation of intelligence 
to sex, social status, school ability, etc.) 
Qf. also Goddard, Bobertag, Winch, Saffiotti, cited below, Nos. 34, 8, 32, 
and 10. 

(*) The references I have selected deal for the most part either with British work, or with studies of the 
Binet-Simon scale, with which hitherto British work has been chiefly concerned. References to foreign work 
upon mental and scholastic tests of other kinds are readily accessible in the bibliographies contained in Nos. 35, 
36, and 39. 

My indebtedness throughout this volume to earlier investigators will be evident to all who are familiar 
with the literature of the subject, or who turn to the books and papers quoted here. In the text it would 
have been impossible to make more detailed acknowledgments to the work already carried out upon every 
individual test ; and I was desirous not to overburden my semi-practical discussions with yet more numerous 
footnotes. The scientific student, who takes up a test of any one particular species, will find it easy, by follow- 
ing up the fuller references inserted in the volumes chosen below, to put himself in touch with the principal 
researches. 

411 



412 

Untranslated Literature. 

7. — Meumann, E. — Vorlesungen zur Einfuhrung in die Experimentelle 
Pddagogik. Verlag von W. Engelmann, 1911-14, pp. 726+800 + 919. 

(Vol. ii., pp. 130-300, summarises work on the Binet scale up 
to date of writing, and gives suggestions for improvement of the 
tests.) 

8. — Bobertag, O. — " ijber Intelligenzpriifungen nach der Methode von 
Binet und Simon." Zeitschrift fur Angewandte Psychologie, 1911, v., pp. 105- 
203 ; 1912, vi., pp. 495-538. 

(A German adaptation of the scale, with discussion of results 
and suggestions for improvement.) 

9. — Chotzen, F. — " Die Intelligenzprufungsmethode von Binet-Simon 
bei Schwachsinnigen Kindern." Zeitschrift fur Angewandte Psychologie, 
1912, vi., pp. 411-494. 

(Application of tests to children in German special schools.) 

10. — Saffiotti, F. U. — La Misura dell' Intelligenza nei Fanciulli. 
Roma : Tipografia dell' Unione Editrice, 1916. pp. 286. 

(One of the most thorough and critical discussions of the Binet- 
Simon scale. Contains an ingenious substitute for the mental-age 
method of grading the results [" Treves-Saffiotti Method "] ; also 
a bibliography of 603 numbers. A detailed summary will be found 
in the Eugenics Review, 1917, viii., pp. 365-373.) 

Mental Deficiency. 

11. — Binet, A., and Simon, Th. — The Intelligence of the Feebleminded. 
Translated by Elizabeth S. Kite. Publications of the Vineland Training 
School, New Jersey, 1916. pp. 328. 

(Many of the Binet-Simon tests are used, but the scale itself is 
not systematically applied.) 

12. — Huey, E. B. — Backward and Feebleminded Children. — Warwick 
and York, 1912. pp. 221. 

(Detailed descriptions of typical borderline cases variously 
treated.) 

13. — Waixin, J. E. W. — Problems of Subnormality. The World Book 
Co., 1917. pp. 485. 

(A systematic discussion of practical problems relating to 
mental deficiency.) 

14. — Bronner, Augusta F. — The Psychology of Special Abilities and 
Disabilities. Kegan Paul, Trench, Triibner and Co., 1919. pp. 269. 

(A discussion of special disabilities in reading, arithmetic, hand- 
work and self-control among normals, and of special abilities among 
defectives, illustrated by cases, mostly delinquent, variously tested.) 

15. — Binet, A., and Simon, Th. — Mentally Defective Children. Trans- 
lated by W. B. Drummond. Edward Arnold, 1914. pp. 180. 

16. — Goddard, H. H. — Feeblemindedness : Its Causes and Consequences. 
The Macmillan Co., 1913. pp. 599. 



413 

17. — Tredgold, A. F. — Mental Deficiency. Balliere, Tindall and Cox. 
3rd edition, 1920. pp. 525. 

(The last three are textbooks of a more general nature dealing 
with mental deficiency.) 

Deficiency and Delinquency. 

IS. — Healy, William. — The Individual Delinquent. WilliamHeinemann, 
1915. pp. 830. 

(Systematic discussion of the causes of juvenile delinquency in 
the light of 1000 cases.) 

19. — Goddaed, H. H. — The Criminal Imbecile : An Analysis of Three 
Murder Cases. Macmillan Co., 1915. pp. 157. 

(Describes the first court cases in which the Binet-Simon scale 
was used in evidence. Strongly emphasises the importance of 
mental deficiency in the production of crime.) 

20. — Miner, J. Burt. — Deficiency and Delinquency : An Interpretation 
of Mental Testing. Warwick and York, 1918. pp. xiv. +355. 

(Excellent statistical discussion. Urges a percentage defini- 
tion of delinquency.) 

21.— Wallin, J. E. W. {loc. cit. sup., No. 13, pp. 123-155). 

(Contains an excellent resume of examinations of delinquents 
by the Binet-Simon scale.) 

Periodical Literature. 

22. — Johnston, Katherine L. — " Binet's Method for the Measurement 
of Intelligence." Journal of Experimental Pedagogy, i., 1911, pp. 24-31. 

(The first investigation carried out in England by means of 
this scale.) 

23. — Dumville, B. — "A Trial of Binet's Tests on Five- Year-Olds." 
Ibid., ii., 1913, pp. 113-118. 

24. — Taylor, N. G. — " Further Data Towards the Study of the Binet- 
Simon Scale." Ibid., iii., 1916, pp. 256-266. 

25. — Moore, R. C. — " The Application of the Binet-Simon Scale to 
Normal English Children." Ibid., iv., 1917, pp. 113-128. 

26.— Lewis, E. O. — " The Binet and Point-Scale Methods of Testing 
Intelligence." Ibid., iv., 1918, pp. 198-202. 

27. — Btjrt, C— " Experimental Tests of Higher Mental Processes." 
Ibid., L, 1911, pp. 93-112. 

28. — Id. and Moore, R. C. — " The Mental Differences between the 
Sexes." Ibid., i., 1912, pp. 273-284, 233-388. 

29. — Id. — " The Development of Reasoning in School Children." Ibid., 
v., 1919, pp. 68-77, 121-127. 

30. — Id. — " The Measurement of Intelligence by the Binet Tests." 
Eugenics Review, vi., 1914, pp. 36-50, 140-152. 

(A critical discussion of the theoretical principles underlying 
the scale.) 

31. — Simon, Th. — "The Measurement of Intelligence." Ibid., vi., 1915, 
pp. 290-307. 



414 

32. — Winch, W. H. — " Binet's Mental Tests : What they are, and what 
we can do with them." Child Study, vi.-viii., 1913-15. 

(A free but excellent revision of the tests as far as age VIII., 
based upon experiments with London school children.) 

33. — Rogers, Agnes L., and McIntyre, J. L. — -" The Measurement 
of Intelligence in Children by the Binet-Simon Scale." British Journal of 
Psychology, vii., 1914, pp. 265-300. 

34. — Goddard, H. H. — " The Binet and Simon Tests of Intellectual 
Capacity." Training School Bulletin, v., 1908, pp. 3-9. (" Revised," ibid., 
viii., 1911, pp. 56-62. " Standard Method," ibid., x., 1913, pp. 22-30.) 

35. — Kohs, Samuel C. — " The Binet-Simon Measuring Scale for Intelli- 
gence." Journal of Educational Psychology, v., 1914, pp. 215-224, 279-290, 
335-346. (^ anno tated bibliography containing 457 numbers, practi- 

cally complete to date of publication.) 

Other references will be found above, pp. 136 and 214-16. 

Other Mental Tests. 1 

36. — Whipple, G. M. — Manual of Mental and Physical Tests. Warwick 
and York. 2nd edition, 1914-15. pp. 366+336. 

37. — Pintner, R., and Paterson, D. G. — A Scale of Performance Tests. 
Appleton and Co., 1917. pp. 218. 

38.— Stern, W. — The Psychological Methods of Measuring Intelligence. 
Translated by G. M. Whipple. Warwick and York, 1913. pp. 160. 
(And references under Periodical Literature.) 

Educational Tests. 

39. — Starch, D. — Educational Measurements. The Macmillan Co., 1916. 
pp. zOz. (Contains a useful bibliography of American literature upon 

the subject.) 

40. — Monro, W. S., De Voss, J. C, and Kelly, F. S. — Educational 
Tests and Measurements. Houghton Mifflin Co., 1917. pp. 309. 

41. — Ballard, P. B. — " Norms of Performances in the Fundamental 
Processes of Arithmetic." Journal of Experimental Pedagogy, iv., 1914, 
pp. 396-405. 

42. — Id.—" Norms of Performances in Reading." Ibid., v., 1915, 
pp. 153-161. 

As these sheets are passing through the press, Dr. Ballard's book on 
Mental Tests (Hodder and Stoughton, Ltd., 1920, pp. x. + 235) has appeared. 
It not only contains the more important of Dr. Ballard's own tests, collected 
and revised, but also forms the soundest and simplest introduction to the 
subject that can be put into an English teacher's hands. 

The valuable compilation, Mental Tests in the American Army, edited 
by C. S. Yoakum and R. M. Yerkes, with the authorisation of the U.S.A. 
War Department (Sidgwick and Jackson, Ltd., 1920, pp. xxiv. + 303) also 
comes into my hands too late to be used or quoted in the foregoing pages. 
The book embodies a detailed set of intelligence tests, applied during the 
war to recruits in the United States. It is, from its purpose, a series suited 
rather to the wholesale testing of adults than to the individual examination 
of school children. Many of the test-sheets, however, will be found suggestive 
in constructing written group tests for older and brighter pupils, such, for 
example, as are examined for the award of junior county scholarships. 

1 See note added on p. 235. 



INDEX OF SUBJECTS 



Ability, 

arithmetical, in boys, superior, 266 
arithmetical, in mental defectives, 

298, 300, 303, 336 
artistic, practical diagnosis of, 325, 
326 
See Drawing 
attainments, 

compared with, 175-182 
correspondence between, and, 182 
discrepancies between, and, 1 
general relations between, and, 
175 
distribution of, 

among normal children, 147—149 
among special school children, 150 
conforms with normal curve, 162 
general (see also Intelligence) 
hypothesis of, 207 
most easily demonstrated in early 
years, 266 
graphical, see Drawing 
intellectual, see Intelligence 
linguistic, see Linguistic ; Reading ; 

Spelling ; Composition 
literary, see Literary ; Composition 
manual, see Manual skill 
measurement of, 3 
moderate degrees of, 2 
musical, 266, 325 
promotion by, 2 
range of, at each age, 157, 158 
scholarship, 178 
specific, see Capacities, specific 
transformation of, 154 
Abstract processes, failure of defec- 
tives in, 336 
See Definition (abstract) and Differ- 
ences (abstract) 
Abstraction, power of children in, 331, 

304 
Absurdities in children's responses, 12 
Absurdities (tests), 56, 236, 237 
Accuracy, 

general, pubertal decline in, 302 
in Arithmetic, 296-298 
in Reading, 277 
tests of, 

in Mental Arithmetic, 296 
in Written Arithmetic, 298 
in Reading, 277 
Adding, 

pence and halfpence (test), 44 
written test of, 298-302, 366 
Adults, Terman's tests for, 70 



Age (test), 34 
Age (of children), 

influence on intelligence, 147, 148 

influence on promotion, 181, 182 
Age-assignments of Binet-Simon tests, 
210 

Binet's original, 5, 212 

changes in, table of, 141, 142 

comparison of, 212 

compilations of, 210, 138 

correlations of, 210, 212 

criterion for, simple, 140 

different investigators', 212, 213 

different in Binet-Simon and Reason- 
ing tests, 238 

disagreement of, 211 

in rural districts, 14 

in Reasoning tests, 228 
Age basis in Scholastic tests, 258 
Age basis of Binet-Simon tests, 4, 130, 

138 
Age, " chronological " defined, 131, 140 

" educational," 237, 335 

finding number of tests to be passed 
at a given, 19 

-groups, overlapping of, 159 

" mental," see Mental age 

-norms, see Norms, 7 

relation between, and school-stand- 
ing, tests, and intelligence, 182 

-scales in composition, drawing, and 
writing tests, 409, 410, 408, 407 
American adult level, 71 

army tests, 71, 244, 414 

averages, 71, 258 

coins and money values, 71 

colloquialisms and phraseology, 71 

tests, see Point-Scale ; Porteus ; 
Stanford ; Vineland 
Analogies test, 72, 226 
Analyses of backward cases, see Cases 
Analysis, case of backwardness due to 
poor, 287 

mathematical and statistical, 130 

testing the power of, 304 
Antonyms and synonyms (test), 228 
Arithmetic, 

analysis of, 304 

backwardness in : three cases ana- 
lysed and treated, 305, 306, 307 

backwardness of girls and defectives 
in problem type, 300 

mechanical and problem type, 299 

school-, a mass of habits and 
memories. 296 



415 



416 



Arithmetic, (cont.) — 

syllabus of, criticized, 262 
teaching methods, diversity and 

innovation in, 296 
tests, value of, in, 295, 296, 304 
difficult to standardize, 298 
effect of the war on, 296 
Arithmetic Tests, 

Fundamental Rules, seeinfra Written 

Mental, 296 

Oral, graded, 356-360 

Written, 

graded mechanical, 298, 361-363 
graded problems, 363-365 
uniform, fundamental rules, 366- 
369 
Arithmetical ability, see Ability 
Arranging weights (test), 35, 51 
Articulation, 269, 270, 286, 292 
Artistic ability, see Ability ; Drawing 
Association, 

articulatory, 285, 304 
auditory, 304 

controlled, free or uncontrolled, 228 
graphic, ideational, visual, 285 
logical, rhyme, verbal, 60 
statistical, method of, 197 
See Coefficient of Association 
Associative reaction of words, 60 
Attention, concentrated and sustained, 

74 
Audiles, 285 
Auditory perception, case of poor, 

286 
Aussage test, 62 

Automatism, circular, 12, 25, 35, 39 
Average, 

American, 71 

as a norm, characters and dangers 

of, 265 
attainments shown by tests and 

tables, 264 
change in mental ratio of defective 

children, 154, 155 
change in retardation of defectives, 

156 
child, determination of, 14, 15 
for Reasoning tests, 238 
length of sentences in composition, 

332 
measurement in terms of, 15, 309 
mental age of boys and girls, 193 
mental ratio of a rural parish, 171 
of defectives, at 14 years, 336, 337 
of poor and superior schools, 191 
overlap of age-groups, 159 
retardation of special school children, 

158 
scores of each age, 144 
standard deviation, 158 
Averages in terms of mental years, 
155 



Backward children, 4 
decline rapidly, 59 
defined, 176 
suggestibility in, 62 



Backward children, (cont.) 
word reactions in, 60 
See Mental defectives, and Special 
school children 
Backwardness, 
analysis of, 

in Arithmetic, its remedy, 303, 304 
in Reading, 283 

in non-scholastic abilities, 267, 268 
in Spelling, 294 
best teaching methods in, 268 
cases of, 

in Arithmetic, 305-307 
in Handwork, 329 
in Reading, 286 
in Spelling, 287 
correlation of, with delinquency, 185, 

186 
diagnosis of, Treves-Saffiotti method 

useful for, 73 
psychological causes of, 267 
relative, in defectives, 337 
See also Retardation 
Barometer of Instruction, Binet's, 257 
Binet- Simon Tests, 
list of, 19-24 

list of, with directions and evalua- 
tion, 24-67 
See Tests ; Record Form 
Binet-Simon Tests. (A). Theory of, 
age -assignments, 

diversity of, in various adapta- 
tions, 6, 212, 213 
principle determining, of each 

test, 140 
larger changes in, 141 
original — sample record card, 5 
allocation of, to appropriate ages, 

131 
arithmetical basis of, inadequate, 

130 
correlation of present with 1908, 
,*1911, and other scales, 136, 137 
with teachers' estimates, 200 
for age, schoolwork, and intelli- 
gence, 182 
for normals and defectives, 200, 

201 
for various school subjects, 184 
difficulties as applied to delinquents, 

189 
difficulty, differences in, due to sex 

and social status, 193 
difficulty, order of, different for 

normals and defectives, 207 
equality of the intervals of the tests, 

138 
equivalence of unit of the tests, 138 
function, their special, the diagnosis 

of mental deficiency, 208 
general nature of, 1 
gradation, serial, of same test 

neglected, 4 
graduation of, and its conditions, 

138 
heterogeneity of, 207 
imperfections of (see also (C) Va- 
lidity), 3, 140, 148 
impermanency of, 209 



417 



Binet-Simon Tests, (cont.) — 

inferiority of, to Reasoning tests 
for older children, 238 

measure both intelligence and school 
attainments, 182 

modifications of, for English use, 8 

percentages passing at each age, 135 

popularity of, 3, 208 

proficiency in, factors of, 175 

promotion in school, use of the tests 
for, 180 

reliability of, for different ages, 201 

representation of, as a linear scale, 
139 

revision and reclassification of, 8 

scales (see infra versions), 3-8 

sex and social status, differences due 
to, 191, 193, 194 

simplicity of, 3, 209 

standardisation of, in various 
countries, 6, 7 
inexactness of, in procedure and 

results, 7 
methods and results of, 130 

translation of, alterations involved 
in, 25, 39, 40, 4«1, 45, 46, 47, 
49, 51, 52, 57, 58, 61, 66, 67 
canon for, 7 
difficulties arising from, 6 

versions of 1908 scale, 5 

versions of 1911 scale, 8, 132, 141 

■See Point-Scale ; Stanford ; Vine- 
land 
Binet-Simon Tests. (B) Use of, see 
Borderline tests 

allowance of time in (see Time 
limits), 15 

application of, to juvenile delin- 
quents, 184 

cautions in examining with, 15, 16 

directions, general, 9 

directions for each test, 24-67 

duration of the examination, 9 

materials needed for, 75 

order of giving ; governing con- 
siderations, 9 

procedure in use of actual, modified, 
15, 19 

procedure of each test, 24-67 

sample record card, 5 
Binet-Simon Tests. (C) Validity of, 
199, 201 

advantages and disadvantages, 73, 
208, 209 

diagnosis of mental deficiency, their 
special function, 201, 203, 209 

diagnostic value of, generally and 
severally, 199, 202, 208 

mediocre for testing normal children, 
201, 208 

most useful for testing border-line 
defectives, 203 

unreliable for testing older children, 
158 

unreliable for testing supernormal 
children, 208 

unsatisfactory tests, see Unsatis- 
factory tests 

valuable tests, 204, 206 
2 E 



Binet-Simon Tests. (C), (cont.) — 
value of any single test, low, 204, 206 
value, relative, of, 206 
Board of Education, 
Annual Report, 3 
Code of, 162, 259, 287 
Borderline, 

actual and mathematical not identi- 
cal, 165 
advantages of percentage, 170 
ages and scores, 14, 19—22 
American, mental age twelve to 

thirteen, too high, 171 
basal character of, 170 
cases potentially feeble-minded, 154 
demarcation line of normals and 

defectives, 162, 169 
demarcation line of normals and 

defectives fictitious, 154 
determination of borderline abilities 
object of the Scholastic tests, 
258 
difficulty in fixing, 163 
for adults, mental age of eight, 208, 

171, 172 
for central school children, 174 
for children, mental ratio of 70 

per cent, 167 
for each age, 168, 169 
for idiots and imbeciles, suggested, 

173 
for Reasoning tests, 238 
for supernormal children, 174 
implied by teachers' nominations 

(mental age eight), 171 
in terms of mental age and tests, 169 
mathematical determination of, 165 
mental deficiency, 

Point-Scale testing, 73 
Binet-Simon, 171, 172 
other tests, 238, 258 
percentage definition, 167 
Simon's, mental age nine, 171 
Stern's and Stanford Revision, 173 
theoretical, 164 

use of special school order of diffi- 
culty of tests for, 144 
various proposals for, 164 
Bow-knot test, 68, 71 
Boxes test, 70 
Boys and girls, 

artistic differences in, 326 

average mental age, 193 

inferiority of, see Girls (superiority 

of) 
left-handedness commoner among, 

311 
superiority of, 

in Arithmetic : problems, sub- 
traction, division, 207, 300, 302 
in Drawing, 326 
in Manual Work, 328 
in memory and perceptual sub- 
jects, 196 
Bright Children, see Central School ; 
Scholarship ; and Supernormal 
Children ; also Genius 
detailed cases of, 179 
instance of, 238 



418 



Bright Children, (cont.) — 

mental development postponed, 153 
mental development, special ex- 
amination for cases of, 153 
moderate degrees of, 2 
promotion of, from infants' depart- 
ment, 2 
reading (silent) of, 270 
removal to higher schools affects age 

and intelligence statistics, 158 
underrating of, 2 

word reactions of, in sixty words' 
test, 60 
British Association report on School- 
books and eyesight, 271 
British Association report on Factors 

in education, 301 
Bucket and fish test, 70 



Calculation, nature of, 300 
Cannon-ball test, 70 
Capacities, see Ability and Intelligence 
fundamental, closely correlated with 

intelligence, 74 
specific, 

and general, best distinguished in 

Standard V boys, 266 
most marked in older children, 266 
various — enumerated, 285 
tests of {compare also data in analyses 

of special cases), 4 
See also Disabilities 
Card system of records, 11 
Cases, illustrative, 286, 287, 295, 305, 

306, 329 
Cautions to be observed in testing 

children, 15, 16 
Central factor, see Ability, general 
Central school children, 

accommodation for, inadequate, 2 
borderline for, in Binet-Simon tests, 

174 
borderline for, in Reasoning tests, 

238 
discrimination of, 2 
examination of, by Binet-Simon 

tests unsatisfactory, 14 
examination of, by Scholastic tests, 
260 
Change of school, effect of, 296 
Change test, 49 
Changes in level of ability, 155-157 

See Mental Ratio 

Children, see Backward ; Bright ; 

Delinquent ; London ; Normal ; 

Special School ; Supernormal ; 

and Mental defectives 

ability, disposition, and mood of, 

compared, 16 
brightest and dullest of a group, 158, 

153 
duplex life of , 1 6 
home conditions and intellectual 

powers of, 191 
location of intellectual position of, 

149 
median, selection of, 14 
Milanese, 73 



Children, (cont.) — 

nine-year-old : standard deviation 
and mental measurement of, 
148 
number and kinds of, tested, 130 
only, and youngest, and the tests, 

195 
overlap of normal and special, 158, 

162 
powers of abstraction of, 331 
repressed or sensitive, 179 
shy, 35 

slum, and superior, and the tests, 1 94 
temperaments, various, of, 16 
unstable, 179 
Chorea, handwriting in, 316, 317 
Chronological age, see Age 
Class instruction, uniformity of, a 

source of failure, 267 
Classification, see Promotion 
Clock -hands test, 70, 71 
Code regulations, see Board of Educa- 
tion 
Code diagram test, 70 
Coefficient, 

of Association, definition and calcu- 
lation of , 197,202,216,219 
fourfold table for, 217 
of Colligation, 197, 203, 205, 220 
Partial, 181, 182 
of Regression, 74, 150, 183 
Reliability, 201 
Coins' tests, 39, 44, 49 

attractiveness and confusions of, 10, 
6, 39, 44, 49 
Colligation, see Coefficient of 
Colour blindness and the colours' test, 

34 
Coloured forms' tests, 222 
Colours' test, 34, 97 
Combinations -methode, 233 
See also Completion tests 
Comparing faces, two lines, weights 
(Binet-Simon Tests), see Tests, 
comparing 
Comparison in reasoning, 304 
Completion tests, 
(argument), 233 
(story), 233 
norms for, 222 
pictorial form of, 222, 276 
Complex, definition of a, 60 

See also Psycho-analysis 
Composition, 

extreme range of individual varia- 
tion, 332 
length of sentence increased with 

age, 332 
literary, logical, mechanical aspects 

of, 331, 332 
mental defectives poor in, 336 
samples analysed, 334, 335 
style : rule of, 332, 334 
Composition test, 330 

median samples for, 395-398 
method of measuring quality, 330 
quality of highly correlated, with 
intelligence and educational 
capacity, 330 



419 



Composition test, (cont.) — ■ 

specimens, best and worst, of , 333, 335 
speed of, girls excel in, 330 
Comprehension (reading) test, 
analysis of, 275, 277 
testing and measurement of, 275, 277 
Computation of marks, 13 
Construction puzzle test, 70 
Contamination in spelling, 292 
Continuous tests (Reading ; Spelling), 

277 
Conversion of Binet scale into London 

scale, 134, 142 
Conversion of test score into mental 

age, 146 
Co-ordination of thought, 52 
Correlation, 

of Binet- Simon tests and specific 

subjects, 184 
of chronological and mental ages of 

defectives, 155 
of educational and mental ratios, 177 
of order of difficulty of various in- 
vestigators, 137 
of teachers' estimates and testsj 200 
partial, 181 

partial and observed of age, attain- 
ments, Binet-Simon tests, and 
intelligence, 182 
Correlations : method of calculating, 

136 
Counting (Binet-Simon) tests, see 

Tests ; Counting 
Crime and mental deficiency, 190 

See Delinquency 
Criterion for age assignments, 140 
Criterion for mental deficiency, 168 
Cross-classification of marks, 267 
Crucial tests for defectives of given 

age, 168 
Cumulative reproduction : analysis, 
elaboration, and parallelism of, 
280 
Cumulative reproduction and dream- 
ing, 279 
Curve, normal, 162, 295 
Curve of mental growth, 244 



Disabilities, see Capacities, specific, 

265, 266, 268, 284 
Disabilities, Specific defined, 284 
Discriminating forms test, 68 
Displaced triangle test, 66, 69 
Distribution, see Attainments, distribu- 
tion of; Intelligence, distribu- 
tion of 
Divided card test, position illustrated, 

39, 41 
Division, written test of, 300, 369 
Dossier : child's school, 269 
Drawing : analysis of progress in, 319— 
321 
defectives' and normals' compared, 
327 
chief characteristics of, 327 
excellence in relative only, 327 
geometrical highly correlated with 
intelligence, 318 



Drawing, (cont.) — 

girls specific talent for, small, 325 

median samples for normals and 
defectives, 383-394 

profile and full-faced drawings, 321, 
322 

psychology of, 319-325 

stages of scribble, line, descriptive 
symbolism, descriptive realism, 
visual realism, repression, artis- 
tic revival, 319-322 
Drawing test, 317 

advantages and vtdue of, 317 

age scale and median samples, 408, 
383 

in Binet-Simon scale, see Tests, 
Drawing 
Dream analysis and cumulative repro- 
duction, 279 

Ease of tests, see Order of difficulty of 

tests 
Easy questions test, 47, 68 
Easy, medium, and hard tests (Treves- 

Saffiotti), 73 
Educational ability, 
border line of, 165 
influence of, on intelligence tests, 1 80 
quality of composition, a test of, 330 
range of individual variability in, 157 
testing, 267 
Educational age, 335 
Educational attainments, 180 

correlation of, with age, mental age, 

and intelligence, 182 
distribution of, 

among delinquents, 185, 186 
at each age, 185 
irrespective of age, 186 
main factor in mental age, 183 
three hundred cases measured, 181 
Educational deficiency, 
factors producing, 188 
of delinquents and criminals, 189 
specific, 168 
testing of, 267 
Educational, 

opportunities, influence of, 74, 175, 

183 
retardation, 168 
ratio, 151, 177, 336 
tests, see Scholastic tests 
Egocentric ideas, 60 
Egocentric words, 229 
Emotions, 

abnormal, of delinquents, 189 

and left-handedness : relation of, 

311 
confusion produced by, 282 
effect of, on tests, 175, 208 
in concrete definitions test, 43 
in difficult questions test, 59 
in sixty words test (suggesting a 

complex), 60 
in suggestion test, 62 
intelligence tests test — also, 16 
novelty of examinations depressant, 

157 
share of, in comprehension test, 278 



420 



Emotions, (cont.) — 

share of, in cumulative reproduction, 

279 
See also Instability ; Psycho-analy- 
sis ; Temperament 
Enumeration, replies by, 27 
Epilepsy and low intelligence, 154 
Equal addition in subtraction, 302 
Equality of the intervals of the tests, 

138 
Error, normal curve of, 162 
Errors, see under Arithmetic ; Read- 
ing ; Spelling 
Evaluation, 

of the Binet-Simon tests, 25-67 
of Supplementary tests, 72 
of Point scale, 72 
Examinations, 

effect of custom and novelty in, 10, 

157 
hesitation and inattention in, 11 
junior county scholarship, 2 
medical, see Medical examination 
Extemporizations in spelling, 293 
Extemporized tests, method of, 258 
External conditions affecting tests, 34, 

39, 45, 48, 175 
External conditions affecting tested 
ability, 197, 198 



Fables test, 70 

Factor, common, see Ability, general 

Fatigue in examined children, 11, 15, 
299 

Feeble-mindedness, see Mental defec- 
tives and Mental deficiency 

Fingers test, 35 

Fish and bucket test, 70 

Fluency in reading, measurement of, 
277 

Folded paper test, 64, 65, 70 

Formulae for intersection point of two 
groups, 165 

Formulae for association coefficient, 
217-220 

Fox and the goose test, 70 

Fractional marking, 11 

Frequency diagrams, 160 

Fundamental rules test, see Arithmetic 
tests, written uniform 

Future scales of tests, 73 

Genius, 13, 333 
Geometrical tests, 72, 222 
Girls, 

aesthetic development of adolescent, 

322 
average mental age of, 193 
conversational powers of, 196 
greater effect of general mental 

factor on, 325 
inferiority of, see Boys, superiority 

of 
specific talent for drawing small, 326 
superiority of, 

in addition and multiplication, 302 
in composition (speed), 330 
in colour sense, 196 



Girls, superiority of, (cont.) — 
in handwriting, 311 
in literary and linguistic subjects, 

196 
in reading, 196, 272 
in rote memory, 196, 302 
Gossip, see Rumour 
Graded, 

dictation test, 288, 403 
directions test, 275 
instructions test, 231 
mental arithmetic test, 296, 403, 404 
reading test, 270, 275, 399 
spelling test, 287, 402 
written arithmetic tests, 298, 404 
Graduation of tests, 138 
Greek key pattern test, 53, 55 
Group tests, 297, 299, 222 
Growth, mental, 
curve of, see Curve 
upper limit of, see Limit 



Habitual errors in spelling, 294 
Handwork, see Manual skill 
Handwork tests, see Manual tests 
Hierarchy (in statistics), 136 
Home conditions of school children, 191 



Ideal measure of mental efficiency, 74 
Idiosyncrasies in spelling, 294 
Idiots, see Imbeciles 
Imagination closely correlated with 

intelligence, 74 
Imaginative type and its antithesis, 

279 
Imbeciles and idiots, borderlines for, 

173 
Impediment of speech and misspelling, 

294 
Inattention in examination, 11 
Individual differences : increase with 
age in normals and defectives, 
158 
Individual differences : greater range 
with reasoning than Binet- 
Simon tests, 238 
Individual, 
teaching, 268 
tests, oral procedure best for, 295, 

296 
variability, 238 
Industrial schools, 131, 185, 189 
Infants' department : deferred work 

in, 2 
Inferences test, see Reasoning 
Ingenuity test, 70 
Instability, 

in delinquents, 189 
in mental defectives, 154, 166 
two cases of, 179 
Instruction, see Teaching 
Instructions for the tests, see Binet- 
Simon ; Supplementary ; and 
Scholastic tests 
Instructions test, 231, 275, 276 
Instructions test, defectives backward 
in, 276 



421 



Intellectual ability, see Intelligence, 

general 
Intellectual factor, see Intelligence, 

general 
Intelligence, 

See also Ability ; Capacities ; Delin- 
quency 
and. educational ability compared, 

158 
and educational attainments : rela- 
tion of, 175 
and educational attainments : con- 
trasted, 177, 178 
and sex, 193-198 
and social status, 190-194 
correlation of, 

with age, schoolwork, and Binet- 

Simon tests, 182 
with drawing, 318, 325 
with composition and geometrical 
drawing high, 318, 330 
definition of, 199 
distribution of, 147-155 

among juvenile delinquents, 185, 

187 
ordinary elementary schools, 148, 

149 
percentiles for each age group, 151 
special schools, 150 
standard deviation as unit, 160 
general, definition of (see also Ability, 

general), 199 
influence of, on educational attain- 
ments, 175 
influence of educational attainments 

on, 175, 178 
measurement, 

in terms of mental age, 4 
in sub- and super-normals, 13 
in median child, 14 
overlap greater than that of educa- 
tional capacity, 162 
quotient (see also Mental ratio), 151 
range of variability in, 158 
single measure for, 74 
tests of, see Binet-Simon and Supple- 
mentary tests 
practical value of, 2 
upper limit of, see Limit 
where attainments greater than, 

176, 178 
where greater than attainments, 178 
Interpretation of pictures, 27 
Intersection point of two distribution 

curves, 165 
Inverted writing ; illustrations, 312- 

315 
Ionic a minore rhythm, 334 

Judgment and intelligence in children, 
74, 52 

Judgment of teachers, see Teachers 

Junior County Scholarships, see Ex- 
amination and Scholarship 

Juvenile courts, 7, 185 

Key to convert tests scored into mental 
age, Table II facing 19 



King and President test, 67 
King of the Golden River, 277 

Labourers : mental ratios of dock- and 

farm-, 171 
Labyrinth test, see Maze 
Lapses in spelling, 293 
Larval capacity, 153 
Latent normality and deficiency, 153, 

192 
Left-handedness, 
definition of, 311 
diminishes with age, 311 
in boys commoner, 311 
in defectives twice as common, 311 
in neurotics, 311 
in normals, 311 

mirror script common with, 312 
treatment of, 312 
unfavourable to progress, 317 
Left position favouring attention, 56 
Length of sentence in composition, 332 
Letters, reading (test), see Reading 
Limit (average upper) of intellectual 

development, 244 
Linear scale of tests, 138, 139, 72 
Linearity of correlation, 325, 176, 150 
Linguistic ability, 

and attainments, 195, 266, 267 
bias, 

of Binet-Simon tests, 184, 283 
of Stanford revision, 71 
of Supplementary Intelligence 
tests, 222 
influence of, on Binet-Simon tests, 

184, 193, 208 
measurement of, 195 
processes, 284 
subjects, 

case of backwardness in, 287 
defectives most backward in, 336 
favour girls and upper class 

children, 197, 198 
imperfection in, is not mental 
deficiency, 266, 267 
tests, see Composition ; Reading ; 
Spelling ; and Supplementary 
tests 
Literary ability (see also Composition), 
331 
length of sentence a measure of, 
331 
subjects, 183, 184 

and general capacity, 266 
Liverpool University, 130 
Logical processes, 266 
London children, 131 
precocity of, 141 
special school, 165 
standardization in intelligence of, 

131, 134 
poverty map, 190 
schools, different, 261 
typical borough, 131 
Look-and-say method, 264 
Look-and-say words, 271, 283 
Lost ball test, 68 

Manual skill, 328, 317, 266 



422 



Manual skill, closely correlated with 

intelligence, 74 
Manual subjects, difficult to estimate, 

184 
Manual subjects, defectives least back- 
ward in, 336 
Manual tests, 328 

materials for, various, 328 
tables for, 408, 409 
Manual work, superiority of boys in, 

328 
Marks, computation of, 13, 301 
Marks, cross -classification of, 267 
Materials, 

for Binet-Simon tests, 75 et seq. 
for manual tests, 328 
for scholastic tests, 339 et seq. 
for supplementary intelligence tests, 
225 et seq. 
Mathematical methods : apology for, 

130 
Mathematical subjects : correlation 

with Binet-Simon tests, 184 
Maze tests, 242-253 
Maze tests, procedure and standardiza- 
tion of, for English children, 243 
Median, the ; median child ; median 

schools, 309, 14, 260 
Medical officer, 3, 165, 262 
Medical examination, 168, 262 
Memorization, technique of, 295 
Memory, 

auditory, 285 

defective, cases of diagnosed and 

treated, 286, 287, 295 
delayed and immediate, 74 
long, and short, distance, 285, 295 
mechanical, 285, 300 
motor, 285 

rational, recognition, 285 
rote, 302 
visual, 285 
Memory tests, 70 
code, 70 

counting backwards, 48 
days of the week, 48 
drawing from memory, 53, 64 
giving age ; date ; surname, 34, 48, 26 
months, 50 

numbers, 25, 28, 34, 35, 50, 60 
reading and reconstruction, 46, 50 
sixty words, 59 
syllables, 28, 32, 43, 63 
triple order, 30 
writing from dictation, 288 
Mental, definition of, 166 
Mental age, 4 

alteration in estimates of, 141 

and chronological of normals and 

defectives, 148-150 
and tests scored, 19 
approximate for 1908 and 1911 

scales (Table II facing), 19 
Binet's estimation of, 19, 146 
borderline in terms of, 169 
conversion of Binet-Simon into 

London scale, 141, 142 
correlation between chronological 
and, 150 



Mental age, (cont.) — 

definition of, not sharp, 160 

equation of, 183 

fixed by unmodified procedure only, 

18 
for composition, 410 
for handwriting, 309 
for reading, 271 
for spelling, 278 
how found, 19, 146-148 
imperfect as a scientific unit, 138 
inequality of, in different percentiles, 

149 
largely due to school attainments, 

183 
of boys and girls, average, 193 
of defectives, 150, 337 
of poor and better class children, 191 
See also Mental Year ; Educational 
age 
Mental Arithmetic, 

impaired by fatigue, 297 

in boys, girls, and defectives, 297, 

298 
test results, averages, and standard 

deviation, 403 
tests, 297, 298 
Mental clinics, need of, 154 
Mental defectives : (A) adults, 

backwardness in spelling and writ- 
ing, 290 
borderline for, 170, 171 
influence of environment upon, 170 
mental ratio of (see Mental ratio), 

170-173 
mortality of, 173 
supervision of, 173, 174 
testing of, 171, 172 
Mental defectives : (B) children (see 
also Special school children) 
ability of, its range, 153, 157, 159 
average progress of, 155 
backwardness of, 
in abstraction, 336 
in arithmetic (written), 303, 336 
in composition, 336 
in instructions test, 276 
in reading, 283 
in reasoning, 336 
in spelling, 290 
relative, 336 
borderline for, precise, 169 
changes in, 151, 152 
crucial test for given age, 168 
curriculum for, need of less formal 

work in, 290, 303, 337 
definition of, 168 
development of, postponed, 153 
differing success in different test 

scales, 244 
drawing of analysed, 327 
excel relatively in drawing, oral, and 

rote arithmetic, 327, 336 
grades of : institution, supervision, 

special school, 174 
handwork of, 336 
heterogeneity of, 166 
left-handedness doubly common in, 
311 



423 



Mental defectives, (cont- 
inental ages of, 150 

mental progress of, 155 

mental ratio of, see Mental ratio 

mirror script common in, 312 

mortality rate of, 173 

normals compared with, 162 et seq. 

re-examination, annual, of same 
cases of, 154 

retardation of, 154, 157 

sub-classes of, 156, 174 

tested : fifteen hundred, seven hun- 
dred and twenty-nine, 259, 131 

tests for, varied order of difficulty 
of, 143, 144 

work by trial and error, not reason, 
303 

writing of, 311 
Mental deficiency, 162-209, 339 

Act of 1913, 166 

absurdities and automatism in ex- 
amination point to, 12 

administrative, not a psychological, 
concept, 166 

amount of, various assessments of, 
163, 164 

average scores at each age, 144 

apparent or temporary, 153 

connotation of, precise, 174 

crime and, see Delinquency 

criterion of, is retarded intelligence, 
168 

criterion decisive, the number of 
tests passed, 169 

decrease of mental progress in, 156 

definition based on accommodation, 
alone satisfactory, 167, 168 

definition, statutory, different for 
adults and children, 166 

delinquency, 

correlation of, with, 188 

not characteristic of, 190 

widely varied estimates of, in, 1 84 

diagnosis of, 203, 204 
for experts only, 14 
Treves -Samotti method advan- 
tageous in, 73 

disabilities, specific, mistaken for, 
266 

divergences of standard of, cause of, 
163, 164 

epilepsy and, 154 

external hindrances and, 152, 154 

failure in class methods not, 267 

instability and, 166, 154 

intellectual and mental deficiency 
not identical, 166 

latent, 153 

line of demarcation of, 163 

linguistic disabilities characteristic 
of, 143, 144 

mental growth in, at times post- 
poned, 153 

mental organization in, weakness 
of, 285 

mental ratios, low, lower with age, 
157 

pathological connections of, 154 

postponement of, 153 



Mental deficiency, (cont.) — 

potential, see Latent normality and 

deficiency 
poverty, allowance for, in estimat- 
ing, 192, 198 
poverty, not sole condition of, 192 
scholastic tests distinguish from 

normality, 1 44 
stereotypy of, 60 
testing, special school order of 

difficulty in, 143, 144 

tests valuable for diagnosis of 

(absurdities, dictation, memory, 

mixed sentences, reading), l43 

transformability of, rare, 154 

Mental efficiency : ideal single measure 

for, 74 
Mental growth : c\irve and limit of, 244 
Mental growth : irregularity and post- 
ponement of, 153 
Mental process, general nature of, 285 
Mental quotient, see Mental ratio, 13, 

151 
Mental ratio, 13, 151 

and educational ratio : correspond- 
ence of, 176, 177, 178 
and power of self-support, 171 
borderline for defectives (seventy 

per cent), 168 
cases of very high, 13, 179, 333 
constancy of, 13, 155, 158 

approximate of defectives, 155 
different for different mental func- 
tions, 173, 157 
of genius, 13 

of Liverpool dock labourers, 171 
of special school children, 155 
of Warwickshire rural parish, 171 
Mental year, as unit of mental measure- 
ment, 4, 258, 259 
See also Mental age 
Methods, see Teaching methods 
Milkmaid and eggs test, 70 
Minneapolis, delinquents of, 185 
Mirror script, 312-315 
Missing words test, 233, 234, 282 
Missing features test, 43, 102-109 
Misspelling, see Spelling 
Mixed sentences test, 61 
Mixed instructions test, 230 
Mixed profiles, see Profile drawing 
Mixed relations test, see Analogies 
Mixed schools, small innate differences 

of the sexes in, 298 
Mnemonics in weak long-distance 

memory, 295 
Money tests (Binet-Simon), see Tests, 

money 
Mongolian defective, a, 334 
Monosyllables, see two- and three- 
letter words 
Moral imbecility, 166 
Morals of fables test, 70 
Morning and afternoon test, 34 
Mortality rate of mental defectives, 

173 
Motor control, case of poor, 329 
Multiplication, written test of, 301, 368 
Musical ability, 266, 325 



424 



Naming tests, see Tests, naming 
Nellie Dale method, 264 
Neurogram, 285 
Neuropathic cases : decline of mental 

ratio characteristic of, 154 
Neurotics, left-handedness in, 311 
Newark (N. J.) detention home, 184 
Norm, average as a, 14 
Norm, medium quality and dangers of, 

265 
Normal children, 

actual and mental age coincide, 148 
average scores at each age, 144 
compared with defectives (see also 

Figure 22), 158 
distribution of mental ages among, 

146 
mental advance and mental ratios 

of, 147-149 
numbers tested, 130, 259 
Normal curve, 
equation for, 265 
of error, 162 

of nine-year, and older age groups, 
148, 149 
Normality, hypothesis of, 162 
Normality, latent, and postponed 

development of, 153, 154, 192 
Norms, age, 

based on averages of normal chil- 
dren, 148 
for English children, 260 
for London children, 14 
for Scholastic tests, 399 et seq. 
for Supplementary tests, 238 
in terms of tests, 169 
need of standardized, 7 
Point scale method applied to 

Binet-Simon tests, 72 
procuring fresh, and revision of, 14 
teacher's own scale of, 262 
Nose, eyes, and mouth test, see Tests ; 

Pointing 
Numbers of children tested, 130, 131, 
259 



Occupations of parents of typical 

schools, 190 
Opposites test, 223-226 
Oral and written testing, see Testing 
Oral questionnaire, 282 
Oral tests, 

predominance in Binet-Simon scale, 

24-67 
scholastic, 270, 272, 273, 296 
supplementary intelligence, 23S, 239 
Order of difficulty of the tests, 131 
differences in due, to sex and social 

status, 194 
for normals, 134 
for defectives, 135 
universal fixed, impossible, 195 
Order of giving the Binet-Simon 

tests, 9 
Order of stability of the tests, 136, 137 
Ordinary schools : test scales and 
syllabuses of, 261, 262 
See also Normal children 



Orthography, see Spelling 
Overlapping, 

of age groups, 159 

of normal and defectives in manual 

work, great, 328 
of norms of intelligence of normals 
and defectives (see also Figs. 
22 and 24), 158 
of ordinary and special school 
children, 336, 163, 165 



Partial coefficient, 182 
Partial correlation, 181 
Partial correlation of Binet-Simon 
tests with age, intelligence, and 
schoolwork, 182 
Pedagogical tests, see Scholastic tests 
Percentage difference, 259 

of error in four fundamental rules 

test, 302 
symmetry in, 203 
Percentiles, method of, 148 
Percentiles, table of, 151 
Perception, concrete and verbal, 74 
Perseveration, 25, 292 
Phonic method, 264, 287, 295 
Phonic words, 271, 283 
Physical relations test, 70 
Pictorial form, applicable to many 

tests, 222 
Pictorial form, applicable to Compre- 
hension test, 275 
Picture test, attractiveness of the, 10 
Picture tests, 30, 43, 61, 223 
Picture tests, illustrations, 81-85, 

89-93, 103-109 
Pint vessels test, 70 
Point of intersection of two groups, 164 
Point of intersection of intelligence 

and educational ability, 165 
Point Scale method, 72, 9, 24 

advantages and drawbacks of, 72 
criticism of, 72 

evaluation and weighting of, 72 
Pointing test, 24 
Porteus maze tests, 242-256, 74 
Positivist type, 279 
Practical suggestions for use of scales, 

261 
Precocity of the London child, 141 
Prediction of ability and mental level, 

151, 174 
President and King test, 67 
Probable error, see Quartile deviation, 
309, 259 
of correlations, 181 
of mental and chronological age, 1 50 
Problem Arithmetic, see Arithmetic 
Problem tests, 62 

Procedure of testing, see Binet-Simon 
tests (use) 
"ascending" and "descending," 

164 
maze tests, 242, 243 
modified and unmodified, 18 
Scholastic tests, 268 et seq. 
subjective evaluation in, minimized, 
221 



425 



Procedure of tested children : diagnostic 

value of, 12, 51 
Profile drawing, commoner after seven, 

321 
Profile drawing, mixed, 323, 327 
Progress, 

decrease of, in defectives universal, 

155 
in drawing, 319 et seq. 
small influence of age on, 1 83 
with change to right-handedness, 
317 
Promotion, 2, 180 

Pronunciation, faulty, a cause of mis- 
spelling, 294 
Prose rhythm, 334 
Psycho-analysis of a backward boy, 

306 
Psycho-analytic mechanisms and com- 
plexes, 
in delinquency, 190 
in drawing, 322 
in reading, 278, 279 
in spelling, 293 
in test of free association, 60 
See also Emotion ; Association 
Psychogram, 266 

Psychological disabilities, see Cases 
illustrative 
in arithmetic, 302 
in reading, 284, 285 
in spelling, 295 
Psychology, educational, general atti- 
tude of, 130, 263 
Psychopathic cases, decline of mental 

ratio in, 154 
Pubertal decline in accuracy, 302 
Puzzle test, Healy's, 70 



Qualitative characteristics, method of 

testing, 308, 309 
Quart can and rifle test, 70 
Quartile deviation (see Probable error), 

170, 309 
Quartile deviation, upper and lower, 

309 



Ratio, see Educational ratio ; Mental 

ratio 
Reaction time, case of slow, 307 
Reading, 

accuracy, expression, comprehen- 
sion, fluency in, 269 
age, 271 

aloud, see Reading silent 
analysis of components of, 269, 277 
backwardness of, defectives in, 276 
comprehension, the test of, 276, 277 
diagnostic value of, overrated, 272 
errors (see also Accuracy), 271, 272 
methods : look and say, Nellie 

Dale, phonic, 264 
silent : neglect, testing, and value 

of, 270 
teaching of futile, with mental ratio 
of 50, 283 
Reading and reconstruction test, 70 



Reading tests, 
Accuracy, 

continuous prose, 277, 350 
graded vocabulary, 270, 339 
ungraded discontinuous, two- and 
three- letter words, 273, 343 
Comprehension, continuous prose, 

277, 350 
Comprehension, graded directions, 

275, 346 
Speed, continuous prose, 277, 350 
Speed, discontinuous, two- and three- 
letter words, 273, 343 
Letters and figures test, 272, 342 
Reasoning, 

arithmetic problems and, 299 

comparison in, 304 

correlation with, intelligence high, 

237, 238 
failure of defectives in, 336 
low grade, case of, 306 
particular forms of, 304 
Reasoning tests, 

best tests of intelligence, 237-241 
procedure and norms for, 238 
superior to Binet- Simon tests for 
older children, 238 
Record card, arrangement of tests on, 

4, 5 
Record form, sample, 19—21 
Records, 11 
Reformatory for women, Bedford Hills, 

N.Y., 190 
Regression, 

coefficient, 150, 183, 174 
equations and lines of plotting, 150 
of real and mental ages of normals 
and defectives, 150 
Reliability coefficients, 201 
Remand homes, 131 
Repeating numbers tests, 25, 28, 34, 

43, 50, 60 
Repeating syllables tests, 28, 32, 43, 

63 
Repression of artistic powers, 322 

See also Psycho-analysis 
Reproduction test, 279 

a test of comprehension, 281 
interrogative and completion modi- 
fications of, 281, 282 
Research, need of, 74 
Response, extenuating circumstances 

in, 27 
Response, types of, 35 
Results, comparability and variability 

of, 14 
Retardation, 

amount indicative of deficiency, 4 
average, absolute and relative, 157, 

158, 159 
educational, factors in, 168 
educational and mental, relation of, 

176 
in delinquent children, 185 
in intelligence, essential criterion of 

deficiency, 168 
of defectives, 151 

of defectives, amount of, one-third 
their age, 168 



426 



Retardation, (cont.) — 

of defectives, increase in, 155 

See also Backwardness 
Revenge test, 233, 234 
Rhymes test, 60 
Rhythm in prose, 334 
Right and left test, 43 
Right-handedness, see Left-handedness 
Roman numerals, conventional use of, 

for mental age, 4 
Rumour, 279 
Rural districts, testing in, 14, 171 



Scales, 

See Binet-Simon tests ; Scholastic 

tests ; Tests 
American, disadvantages of, 257 
application of, to syllabuses, 262 
for measuring in terms of average 

and variability, 309 
separate, needed for separate mental 

functions, 74 
teacher's own, 262 
Schedule system of records, 11 
Scholarship examination, 2, 14, 260 
borderline for scholarship ability in 

Binet-Simon tests, 174 
borderline for scholarship ability in 

Reasoning tests, 238 
winners, see Supernormal children, 
260 
Scholastic tests, 257 et seq. 
age basis in, 258 
application of, to borderline cases, 

258 
application of, to syllabuses, 262 
instruction for, 269 et seq. 
limitations and uses of, 261 
practical suggestions for, 260 
provisional nature of, 260 
quick preliminary estimates by, 269 
Scholastic tests : list of, 

Arithmetic tests, see Mental, written, 

infra 
Composition test (see), 330 
Continuous prose test, see Reading ; 

(Dictation), 277 
Dictation test, 288 
Drawing test, 317 
Fundamental rules test, 300 
Graded, 

arithmetic tests, 296, 361, 363 
directions test, 275 
reading test, 271, 275 
vocabulary test, 287 
Handwork tests, 328 
Mental Arithmetic tests, 296 
Monosvllables test, 273 
Reading tests (see), 270, 272, 273, 

275, 277 
Reproduction test, 275 
Sewing test, 329 
Spelling test, 287 

Two- and three-letter words test, 273 
Writing test, 308 

Written Arithmetic tests, 298, 300 
School attainments, see Educational 
attainments 



Schools, 

central, 2, 14, 174, 260 
different classes of, tested, 131, 191 
different classes of, parents' occupa- 
tions in, 190 
methods of, benefit backwardness 

more than ability, 147 
mixed, and sex differences, 297 
secondary, 260 
special (see) 

tested : ordinary, median, and 
special, 260 
Sentence building test, 52, 60 
Sentences : length of, in children's 

and authors' prose, 332 
Sequence of tests, see Order of tests 
Seven-pint test, 70 
Sewing, test of, 329 
Sex differences, 

*See Boys, Girls, Social status 
and intelligence, 193—195 
chiefly acquired, 193, 196 
general influence of, 74, 196, 297, 

300, 330 
in drawing, 325, 326 
in linguistic and literary subjects, 196 
in manual and perceptual subjects, 

196 
in mixed schools, 298 
in reading, 272 
Sex (naming own) test, 25 
Similarities test, 68 
Simultaneous testing, 221 
Sixty words test, 59 
Social status, 190 et seq. 

association between the tests and 

differences in, 191 
classification of schools according 

to, 191, 131 
influence of, 74, 188 et seq. 
on individual tests, 193 
on Binet-Simon measurement of 

intelligence, 197, 198 
on reading, 272 j 
of English and American subjects, 71 
of English and French subjects, 141 
of special school children, 192, 260 
sex differences of good, mixed, and 

poor schools, 298 
tests easier for children of poorer 

schools, 195 
tests easier for children of better 
schools, 195 
Solving problems test, 62 
Space and time relations in the child's 

mental attitude, 331 
Spearman's foot rule coefficient, 220 
Special abilities, see Capacities, specific 
Special classes, 

aim of, more important than method, 

264 
for backward and supernormal chil- 
dren, 188, 179 
scholastic scale applied to syllabuses 
of, 262 
Special school children, see Mental 
defectives 
absolute and average retardation of, 
158, 159 



427 



Special school children, {cont.) — 

attainments in tests of, relative, 

337 
backwardness, 

in problems and subtraction great, 

300, 303 
in fundamental rules variable, 303 
in mental arithmetic not extreme, 

298 
in reading, 272 
relative of, 336, 337 
distribution of intelligence in, 150, 

161, 162 
educational rather than mental 

defectives, 174, 176 
intelligence of, greater than school 

ability, 162 
maximum improvement and de- 
terioration of, 153 
mental ratio of, 155-157 
progress of, 

decrease of, a universal character- 
istic, 156, 157 
inversely as age, 155, 156 
speed of, of higher grade children, 
156 
retardation of, progressively in- 
creases, 151 
retardation of London — one-third 

their age, 165 
social status of, 192, 260 
teaching methods of, best, 263, 268, 
283, 290, 303 
often better in special backward 

classes, 188 
reading and spelling useless to 

low grade, 283, 290 
routine class, where it fails, 267 
tested, 131, 259 
Special schools, 

annual survey of, 152 
tested, 260 

transfer to, followed by unusual 
progress, 155 
Specific capacities, see Capacities 
Specific disabilities : see Disabilities 
Speed tests, 223, 273, 277, 330 
Spelling, 287 et seq. 
age, 288 
backwardness in. analyses and cases 

of, 294, 295 
backwardness in, of defectives, 289, 

290, 295 
capacity, 288 
continuous and discontinuous, 287, 

288 
errors, analysis and schedules of, 

290-293 
mental age for, 278 
speech impediment and, 294 
testing, difficulties of, 289 
Spelling tests, continuous (dictation), 

288, 355 
Spelling tests, discontinuous (graded 

vocabulary), 287, 354 
Square copying test, see Tests ; Draw- 
ing 
Stammering and left-handedness, 311, 
312 



Standard deviation, 157-162, 145 

as unit of distribution, 160 

average, 158 

definition of, 265, 309 (foot-notes) 

for each year, 145 

in composition very large, 332 

in drawing high, 326 

in terms of mental years, 145, 147 

increases in arithmetical progression 
till ten, 158 

increase lessens after ten years of 
age, 158 

line of demarcation and, 164 

measures the intervals of the tests, 
138, 139 

of a nine-year-old child, 148 

of Warwickshire rural population, 
171 

plus average measures a good per- 
formance, 265 

probable error and, 309 

proportional to age, 158 
Standardization of tests, mode of, 

223 
Standardization of the Binet- Simon 

scale, problems of, 130 et seq. 
Standardized test, method of, 258 
Stanford Revision, 

advantages and drawbacks, 71 

age assignments of, 213—215 

borderline for adults, 173 

modifications desirable in, 71 

new and alternative tests in, 71 

reforms in, 70 

revision and extension, 9, 24, 68, 70, 
213-215 
Statistical analysis, 130 
Stereotypy, mental, 60 
Stuttering, see Stammering 
Style, discussion of, 333, 334 
Style, rhythmic types of, 334 
Subjective evaluation, 221, 257 
Subnormal children, see Backward 
children ; Mental defectives ; 
Special school children and 
Retardation 
Subtraction, least accurately worked 

rule, 302 
Subtraction, written test of, 300, 405 
Suggestibility in young children, 62, 26 
Suggestion in Point Scale method, 72 
Suggestion test, 62, 116 
Summary test, 67 
Superior adults, tests for, 70 
Supernormal children, see Bright chil- 
dren, 13, 174 

among delinquents, 188 

borderline for, 174 

classes suggested for, 179 

measured by standard deviation, 265 

mental ratios of, 174 

methods of teaching, 179, 268 

remarkable instance of, 333 

retarded scholastically, 178 
Supplementary intelligence tests, 223 
Surname test, 26 

Syllabus : application of scales to, 262 
Syllabus : criticism of, 262, 269 
Syllogism tests, see Reasoning 



428 



Symmetry in percentages, 203 
Synonyms test, 228 



Teachers' estimates of intelligence, 1 99, 

204 
coefficient of colligation between 

success in the tests and, 205 
correlation between the tests and, 

200 
reliability of, 199 
judgment in qualitative subjects, 

178, 199, 257, 261 
own scale of norms, 262 
standards incommensurable, 261 
Teaching, 

arithmetic, diversity in methods of, 

295, 296 
backward children : failure in and 

best methods, 263, 268, 283, 290, 

303 
collective and individual, 268 
dictation, 288 

drawing : criticism of and sugges- 
tions for, 318, 325 
experimental, 268 
individual, importance of, 268 
literary technique, 331 
methods, 267 
psychological results and drawing, 

325 
reading, 284, 269 
subtraction : equal addition method, 

302 
successful effect of, on dullness, 176 
test questions not models for, 264 
Temperament and measurement of 

intelligence, 208 
Test materials for Binet-Simon tests, 

75 et seq. 
Test materials for handwork tests, 328, 

329 
Testimony test, 62 
Testing, 

adult mental defectives, 172, 173 
cases illustrating, 286, 287, 295, 305, 

326, 329 
collective, 221 
delinquents, 185, 189, 190 
new scale of, a scientific necessity, 

209 
oral, 236, 270, 296 
procedure, see Procedure 
value of exemplified, 178, 179 
within the same school standard, 

238 
written, 296, 298 
Tests, 

allowances for passing odd, 4 
arrangement of, always relative, 196 
attractiveness of certain, 10 
for children of different sex and 

social status, 194 
graduating a scale of, conditions of, 

137, 138 
independent of subjective influ- 
ences, 257 
influence of sex and social status on, 

193, 196 



Tests, (cont.) — 

method of selecting and standard- 
izing, 223 
object of the standardized, 258 
object of the scholastic scale of, 258 
of school subjects, 74 
order of difficulty of, universal 

fixed, impossible, 195 
order of, for different sex and social 

status, 194 
simultaneous for large numbers, 221 
Tests, list of [those italicized are 

Binet-Simon tests] 
Abelson's geometrical, 71 
Absurdities (discontinuous), 56 
Absurdities (continuous), 236 
Abstract terms : defining, differences, 

64, 66 
Accuracy, see Accuracy 
Adding pence and halfpence, 44 
Age, 34 
American, see Porteus ; Stanford ; 

Vineland 
American army, 71 
Analogies, 72, 226 
Arithmetic, see Arithmetic 
Arithmetical problems, 70, 363 
Arranging five weights, 51 
Aussage, 62 
Ball and field, 68 

Binet-Simon, see Binet-Simon tests 
Borderline, 168, 172 
Bowknot, 68 
Boxes, 70 
Cannon-ball, 70 
Change, 49 
Clockhands, 70 
Code diagram, 70 
Coins, four, 39 
Coins, nine, 50 

See also Money infra 
Coloured forms, 222 
Colours, 34, 97 
Comparing faces, 30 
Comparing objects, see Differences, 

infra 
Comparing two lines, 29 
Comparing weights, 35, 51 
Completion (argument), 234 
Completion (story), 233 
Composition, 330 
Concrete objects, 45 
Concrete terms, 40, 45 
Construction puzzle, 70 
Continuous prose, 277 
Copying script, see Transcription, 

infra 
Counting backwards, 48 
Counting four pennies, 29 
Counting thirteen pennies, 35 
Crucial, 169 

Cutting folded paper, 64, 70 
Date, 48 

Days of week, 36 
Defining abstract terms, 64 
Defining concrete terms, 40 
Defining words, 68 
Definitions, 229 
Describing pictures, 29, 61 



429 



Tests, (cont.) — ■ 
Diagram code, 70 
Diamond, see Drawing infra 
Dictation, 46 
Dictation (graded), 288 
Differences abstract, 6 
Differences concrete, 456 
Difficult questions, 57 
Directions, 275 
Discriminating forms, 68 
Displaced triangle, 66 
Divided card, 39 

Drawing designs from, memory, 53—56 
Drawing diamond, 36 

detailed investigation of, 36-38 
Drawing displaced triangle, 66 
Drawing from imagination, 64 
Drawing from memory, 53-56 
Drawing Greek hey pattern, 53 
Drawing square, 30 

detailed investigation of, 32 
left-handedness in, 30 
Drawing truncated cone, 53 
Easy questions, 47, 68 
Easy medium and hard, 73 
Extemporized, 258 
Fable morals, 70 

Faces, see Comparing faces supra 
Fingers, 35 
Fish and bucket, 70 
Folded paper, 64, 70 
Fundamental rules, 302 
Geometrical, 71, 222 
Giving Age, Change, Date, Differ- 
ences, Numbers on fingers, Sixty 
words, Surname, see Age ; 
Change ; Fingers, etc., sup. et 
inf. 
Graded, see Graded 

Greek key, 53 

Group, 221, 295 
Handwork, 328 
Healey's puzzle, 70 
Holes in folded paper, 70 
Individual, 295 

Inferences, see Reasoning 

Ingenuity, 70 

Instructions, 231 

Knife, key, penny, see Naming simple 
objects infra 

Labyrinth, 242 

Letters, see Reading 

Lines, see Comparing lines supra 

Linguistic, see Linguistic 

Lost ball, 68 

Manual work, 317, 328 

Maze, 242 

Memory, see Memory tests 

Memory for numbers and syllables, 
see Repeating infra 

Mental arithmetic, 296 

Missing features, 43 

Mixed instructions, 230 

Mixed relations, 70 

Mixed sentences, 61 

Money, see Adding pence and half- 
pence ; Change ; Coins, four, and 
nine ; Counting pennies supra 

Morning and afternoon, 34 



Tests, {cont.) — - 

Name, see Surname infra 

Naming coins, 39, 50 

Naming colours, 34, 97 

Naming months, 50 

Naming own sex, 25 

Naming simple objects, 26 

Naming week-days, 36 

Nose, eyes, and mouth, see Pointing 

infra 
Numbers, see Repeating numbers 

infra 
Opposites, 223 
Oral, see Oral 

Pennies, see Counting pennies supra 
Pictorial, 223 
Pictures, 26, 43, 61, 80 
Pint vessels, 70 
Point Scale, see Point Scale 
Porteus, see Porteus 
President and King, 67 
Pretty and ugly faces, see Comparing 

faces supra 
Problem solving, 62 
Quart can and rifle, 70 
Questions, see Easy and Difficult 

questions supra 
Reading, see Reading Tests 
Reading and reconstruction, 46, 50 
Reasoning, 237-241 
Repeating numbers, 25, 28, 34, 43, 50, 

52 
Repeating syllables, 28, 32, 43, 63 
Reproduction, 46, 50 
1 Resume, see Reading and reconstruc- 
tion supra 
Reversed digits, 68 
Reversed triangle, 63 
Rhombus, see Drawing diamond 

supra 
Rhyming, 60 
Right and left, 43 
Scholastic, see Scholastic Tests 
Sentence building, 52, 60 
Seven pint, 70 
Sewing, 329 
Sex {own), 25 
Shoe-string, 68 
Similarities, 68 
Simple commands, 24 
Simultaneous, 221, 295 
Sixty words, 59 
Solving problems, 62 
Spelling, 288, 355 
Stanford, 68 
Suggestion, 62 
Summarizing, 67 
Superior adults, 70 
Supplementary intelligence, 223 
Surname, 26 

Syllogisms, see Reasoning supra 
Synonyms, 228 
Testimony, 62 
Three and five pints, 70 
Three commissions {errands), see 

Triple order infra 
Three words sentence, 52, 60 
Three words to rhyme, 53 
Transcription, 36 



430 



Tests, (cont.) — 

Treves-Saffiotti, 73 

Triangle, 66 

Triple order, 30 

Two- and three-letter words, 273 

Ungraded, 221, 273, 300, 339, 343 

Unsatisfactory, see Unsatisfactory 
tests 

Vineland, 68, 214 

Vocabulary, 68, 71, 270 

Week-days, 36 

Weights, two, 35 

Weights, five, 51 

Writing (Transcription), 36 

Writing (Speed and Quality), 308 
Tetrachoric function, 220 
Thinking, types of, 279 
Three- and five-pint tests, 70 
Three words (sentence building) test, 

52, 60 
Time and space relations : child's 

conception of, 331 
Time limits for tests, 7, 15 

for adding pence and halfpence, 45 

for analogies, 226 

for colours, 34 

for composition, 330 

for counting backwards, 48 

for differences, 45 

for difficult questions, 57 

for divided card, 40 

for fundamental rules, 302 

for memory drawing, 53 

for months, 50 

for naming coins, 50 

for opposites, 223 

for rearranging mixed sentences, 61 

for rhyming, 61 

for sentence building, 52 

for two- and three -letter words, 274 

for week-days, 36 

for weights, 51 

for writing (speed), 308 
Timidity in examination, 11 
Translation, see Binet-Simon Tests (A) 
Treves-Saffiotti method, 73 
Triangle test, 66, 69 
Triple order test, 30 
Truncated cone fest, 53, 113 
Two matches test, 233 
Two- and three-letter words test, 273 
Types of thinking, antithetical and 
various, 279 

Understanding simple commands test, 
24 

Ungraded tests (Scholastic and Supple- 
mentary), 221, 273, 300, 339, 343 

Unit, 

equivalent of unit of tests, 138 

of measurement of attainments, 259 

of mental year, 258 

of number of tests passed, 138 

of percentage difference, 259 

of probable error, 259 

of standard deviation, 160, 259 

of variability, 309 

United States Census report on Feeble- 
minded and Insane, 163 



Unsatisfactory tests, 

age, 34 

colours, 34 

common objects, 26 

comparing faces, 30 

concrete terms, 40, 45 

date, 48 

morning and afternoon, 34 

naming coins, 39, 50 

naming months, 50 

naming sex, 25 

pictures, 26, 43, 71 

problems (arithmetical original), 296 

suggestion, 62 

surname, 26 
Unstable children, see Instability 
Upper limit of development of intelli- 
gence, see Limit 

Validity of the tests, see Binet-Simon 

tests (validity of) 
Variability, 

greater in intelligence than in educa- 
tional ability, 158 

increases with age, 159 

scales for measuring in terms of, 309 

standardization of, problem of, 262 

unit of, 309 
Versions of the Binet-Simon scale, 

Point Scale, 72 

Stanford Revision and Extension, 68 

Treves-Saffiotti, 73 

Vineland, 68, 213, 214 
Visualization, 285 
Vocabulary test, 68, 71, 270 

for definition, 230, 340 

for reading (graded), 270 et seq. 

for spelling (graded), 287 et seq. 

for synonyms, 229 
Vocational diagnosis, 269 

War, effect of, on teaching, arithmetic 

and tests, 296 
Weber's law, 51 
Weighting, 

by colligation coefficient, 203 

by regression coefficient, 74 

of Point Scale tests, 72 

of sample schools for social and 
other differences, 131, 147, 260 
Weights tests, 35, 51 
Word blindness, 265, 284 
Words : associative reaction of, 59 
Words : definition of, 60 
Writing, 307-317 

choreic, 316, 317 

criterion for mental age, 309 

inverted or mirror script, 312, 315 

left-handedness and, 312 

of normals and defectives, 308 

quality, schedule for analysis of, 308, 
310 

samples, median, of, 370 

sex differences in, 311 

speed of, 308 

tests, 36, 308 
(quality), 308 
(speed), 308 



